The most viewed one so far is Part I with Hone Harawira. I’ve listened to many of them. Bryce has a good interviewing style, where he lets the pollies talk, but also comes back to stuff they gloss over.

Back home we don’t have truthers or birthers, but instead the Labour Party Campaign Manager Trevor Mallard. He blogs:

Interesting disclosure from David Farrar yesterday. He, along with Matthew Hooton, and (waste of members money) PSA are bankrolling Bryce Edwards, one of the few remaining supporters of the Alliance, to provide the political commentary which mainly attacks Labour and the Greens from the looney left. The guy makes Margaret Mutu look like a well balanced academic.

As we all know the majority of Farrar’s income comes from the taxpayer via a “research” arrangement.

I wonder if Bill English signed the deal off or whether it was just a nod and a wink.

So Bill English secretly instructed me to secretly fund Bryce Edwards, so Bryce would attack Labour. With such insight, Trevor could apply to join either the birthers or the truthers.

First it is interesting to note his portrayal of Dr Edwards as more unbalanced than Margaret Mutu (who called for a ban on white immigration). This may come as a surprise to his many colleagues who have been interviewed by Dr Edwards for the OU Vote Chat series. His attack on Dr Edwards may remind readers of his attacks on Erin Leigh and others, and are perhaps a salient reminder of what awaits people if Labour gets back into Government.

I do wonder what Trevor’s colleague, tertiary education spokesperson Grant Robertson, thinks of Trevor’s attacking of an academic for his political views.

I should point out at this stage that Dr Edwards is what one would call left-wing. Like John Pagani, he used to work for the Alliance in Parliament around 10 years ago. It is of course very unusual for an academic to be left-wing. Almost unheard of.

Now let us get to Trevor’s discovery of this big secret, the sponsorship of NZ Politics Daily. It was a closely guarded secret until I revealed it in Stuff yesterday. Oh except for the fact that every single issues for the last few months has said:

New Zealand Politics Daily is produced independently by Bryce Edwards, Department of Politics, University of Otago, with the help of a research assistant who is paid for by the sponsorship of:
Curia Market Research – the place to go if you want to know what New Zealanders are thinking
Exceltium Ltd – New Zealand’s most successful corporate and public affairs consultancy
PSA – the public sector union advocating for strong public services and decent work.

On top of this daily disclosure by Dr Edwards, I blogged on the sponsorship back in June. The $100/week Curia pays doesn’t go to Bryce but to a research assistant who compiles the scores of stories included in the e-mail edition. I find the compilation incredibly useful as it lists every political story and major blog post for the day, and often discover stories I would have missed through it.

There is absolutely no input or influence over what Bryce writes as an intro summary to the daily bulletin. I would say I disagree with Bryce’s take on things probably twice as often as I agree with one! To give an example of some of Bryce’s recent summaries which in Trevor’s fantasy world Bill English is paying for:

• This could be the year of the Greens – finally they might crack the 10% mark that has eluded them in every general election so far. And with the popular demise of Labour and the ideological confusion of Mana, the Green Party might end up being the real success story for the leftish side of the political spectrum.
• With patience to delve through this analysis, anyone should be able see that the Police modus operandi and the Government’s attempts to help the Police out are rather outrageous.
• The politics-free zone of the Rugby World Cup was supposed to deprive the Opposition parties of any significant media publicity in the main period leading up to the general election – but it might not quite work out as National intended. … Of course, the RWC opening night debacle has tarnished National’s competency reputation … Labour and the Greens are not just basking in National’s woes, however, but seem to be proactively attempting to get their messages out to the public while National has its mind on other things. During the last day or so, Labour and the Greens have been announcing all sorts of policies and campaigns. Labour’s policy on the Christchurch rebuild, in particular, might gain it some real kudos
• There is no doubt that the National Government deserves the pressure that is currently being applied over the shambles of the Rugby World Cup opening night. …But the fiasco has certainly taken the shine off the National Government’s general appearance of competency. Murray McCully’s days as a minister suddenly seemed numbered.
• National needs to be reminded that most people believe that we have governments and collective responsibility so people can feel protected from these bolts from the blue. 
• Another chapter in the saga of malicious bungling by the Police has come to a ridiculous end with charges being dropped against 11 of the accused in the Urewera ‘terror’ case
• Another chapter in the saga of malicious bungling by the Police has come to a ridiculous end with charges being dropped against 11 of the accused in the Urewera ‘terror’ case
• The National Party list for the 2011 general election is disappointing and boring.
• John Key hasn’t let the fact that he has not actually read Nicky Hager’s book stop him from voicing the same arrogant dismissiveness we saw in evidence in his initial handling of the Israeli spy allegations and the work of journalist Jon Stephenson on Afghanistan.
• Apparently there will be a ‘welcoming committee’ there to greet the National Party ministers and thank them for all that they’ve done to start to rebuild the city. Unfortunately for National, this sarcastic ‘thank you’ will be in the form of a protest against the way that the city is being rebuilt

I don’t mind Trevor’s mad conspiracy theories involving me and Bill English. They are at least amusing, even if often copied from Whale Oil.

But I do think he owes Dr Edwards an apology for impuging his integrity.

Matthew Hooton is less kind to Trevor in his blog post, and Whale is his normal gentle self. Also Keeping Stock chips in.

Finally a video reminder of Trevor  at his finest, courtesy of Whale.

UPDATE: I’m relaxed about Trevor’s defamatory comments and have better things to do than talk to lawyers, But I understand others who were named are not so forgiving and have consulted their lawyers. No parliamentary privilege for Red Alert. Could be an expensive exercise for them as not only is Trevor liable but so is the Labour Parliamentary Party as the blog publisher.

Bryce (or one of the other editors) also does a summary of the major issues of the day, and particular stories he feels are must reads.  I do recommend interested people either check his website out with the summary, or ask to be put on the e-mail list for the full document.

Now putting it together is a big chore, and Bryce has a couple of guest editors who help put it together who have to be paid. He sought sponsorship for it, and I agreed to have Curia pay for a third of the cost, along with Matthew Hooton’s Exceltium and the Public Service Association.  

My motivation is primarily to support a good political resource, but also saw an opportunity to get the Curia brand out amongst key political people.

There is no editorial input due to the sponsorship. And ironically the main guest editor is Gerard Hehir, the President of the UNITE union. Bryce and Gerald decide which stories get included, and which ones to highlight.

Anyway if you do wish to receive it by e-mail, contact Bryce on bryce.edwards@otago.ac.nz, and you can see the smaller summary at his Liberation website. The NZPD can not be used for commercial purposes, only for research purposes.

He does a summary of the major issues with his commentary, and then provides links (or pdf copies in the e-mail version) to several dozen stories that have appeared on media on blogsites. They’re helpfully grouped together by topic.

I am already quite addicted to it. While I see most of the stories that Bryce compiles, there are always a few I have not seen. I recommend you check it out every day.

Not only is the Destiny Church facing all sorts of internal ructions relating to its financial affairs and control, but the Christian political party that is an outgrowth of Brian Tamaki’s church – the Family Party – has just applied to cancel its registration with the Electoral Commission, and hence dissolve itself. The Family Party – one of three Christian-based parties that sought the party vote in the 2008 election – originally went under the name of ‘Destiny New Zealand’, until a major reconfiguration occurred prior to the 2008 general election.

Yay. The last thing I want is a party linked to a cult being in Parliament.

The Family Party in 2008 got only 0.35% of the vote and in 2005 Destiny itself got 0.62%.

Hopefully this means Arch-Bishop Brian has given up on ruling the country, and will leave most of us alone, and just go back to (financially) preying on his victims parishioners.

Axe the tax? Labour would if it could. But it can’t. So maybe the tax will stay. Maybe it won’t. Who knows.

Labour isn’t saying. And it won’t be saying for quite a while yet. …

National’s overall tax package will leave Labour nursing a big political headache – how to make up the $2 billion shortfall in revenue if Labour pledges to restore the rate of GST back to 12.5 per cent.

Labour won’t say how. But it can hardly talk of raising income tax rates which National will have just lowered.

No party – not least one coming from such a long way behind its rival – can afford to saddle itself with that kind of platform.

I would welcome Labour giving New Zealanders a clear choice, and campaigning on increasing personal income tax rates.

But that is one thing Labour will definitely not be doing. It is not going to be trapped into declaring a position which it might later regret.

Goff has been around long enough to remember National’s very own GST-induced political disaster.

When Labour introduced GST in 1986, National felt obliged to come up with an alternative – the long-forgotten “Extax”.

With Labour determining no items would be exempted from GST, National saw a gap in the political market. Extax allowed exemptions for basic foods, doctors’ fees, local authority rates and some charities. The tax was universally panned as an administrative nightmare.

The ridicule prompted senior National MPs to lose faith in the policy, resulting in mixed messages as to where National really stood on a broad-based consumption tax.

Not just National MPs. I was an office holder in National in 1987 and I actually voted for the Labour Party, partly because of National’s ridicolous Extax policy.

Meanwhile Bryce Edwards looks at the Axe the Tax campaign. He looks at whether or not is is electioneering regardless of the rules devised by MPs on what is legal:

The Labour Party obviously hasn’t learned much from the severe public ignomany suffered when it was revealed that the party had been paying for its electioneering Pledge Card with public funds while in government. Their latest rort – running a heavily branded bus campaign around the country – is no less electioneering, yet Labour has once again used taxpayer funds to pay for this political advertising. This blog post looks at whether such electioneering can really be called ‘legitimate’, even if the exercise is made to fit into the dodgy Parliamentary Service rules. Regardless of the expenditure’s legal status, few voters will appreciate having to pay for such overt political advertising.

Bryce goes on to distinguish between whether something is “legal” and “legitimate”

I find these books so fascinating, I was even reading it during the speeches!

Bryce Edwards has reviewed (h/t iPredict Blog) a chapter by Shaun McGirr and Rob Salmond on what sources of information best predicted the election outcome. Was it an individual poll, the iPredict markets or the polls of polls.

The amount invested in iPredict was considerable:

• $64,500 was traded over the likely nature of ‘the Maori Party’s post-election relationship with National’
• $25,800 was traded over the Wellington Central battle between Grant Robertson and Stephen Franks
• $132,100 was traded over whether ‘there will be a National prime minister after the 2008 election’
• $413,000 in total was invested in election-related predictions

And how did iPredict do”

So, how accurate was iPredict in 2008? McGirr and Salmond conclude that although iPredict overestimated the eventual support for both Labour and National, it was more accurate any individual polling company.

And the individual polls:

In reality in 2008, McGirr and Salmond found this to be the case – with Colmar Brunton and DigiPoll exaggerating public support for National, and Roy Morgan exaggerating support for Labour (p.264).

So which polling companies were most accurate and inaccurate? McGirr and Salmond say that TV3’s TNS poll was the best (as it was in 2005 as well), and Fairfax’s Neilson pool was the poorest.

The TV3 poll is the one that currently shows a 27% gap! Mind you they are now with Reid Research, so there may be a different methodology used now.

Then they look at the polls of polls published by three outlets – NZPA, Rob (at 08 Wire) and myself (at curiablog).

In addition to the five opinion polls, some observers attempted to average out the idiosyncratic errors of the individual polls by aggregating them into a “poll-of-polls” using different methods. The New Zealand Press Association simply took the average of the estimates of the six most recent polls, while The New Zealand Herald took the average of the last four polls. Two blog-based polls-of-polls – one run by David Farrar of New Zealand’s premier political blog Kiwiblog, and one hosted at a smaller blog [run by author Rob Salmond] called 08wire – weighted more recent polls with larger sample sizes more heavily (p.257).

And how did the poll of polls do?

McGirr and Salmond say that ‘Poll-of-polls consistently performed well during the 2008 campaign, outperforming most of the opinion polls and the prediction markets’ (p.270). They therefore advocate that both the media and public should pay much more attention to this highly accurate source of political information.

Tis has prompted me to update the poll of polls widget, which is below.

Salmond ranks the different outlets for their accuracy to the final result. In order they were:

1. NZ Herald poll of polls 6.1 (error from result)
2. NZPA poll of polls 6.8
3. Curiablog poll of polls 8.1
4. TV3/TNS poll 9.6
5. 08 wire poll of polls 13.6
6. iPredict 15.7
7. TVNZ/Colmar Brunton poll 16.8
8. NZ Herald/Digipoll poll 19.8
9. Roy Morgan poll 20.8
10. Fairfax/Neilsen poll 29.6
11. NZ Political Stockmarket 109.5

The NZ Political Stockmarket used virtual money, so it shows what a difference real money can make.

The authors conclude that media outlets should not just report the individual poll results when they commission a poll, but also publish regular info on a poll of polls and on iPredict.

Incidentally I will probably review and tweak the curiablog methodology a bit when I have some spare time.

Sue Bradford: That tension is always there in our Green Party, as it is in green parties around the world… I think that some of the people on the more blue-green, or conservative side of the Green Party will be feeling probably quite relieved that I won’t be a Green MP anymore.

Yet Green party supporters on this blog attacked me when I suggested Sue’s departure pointed to some splits in the party. They insisted it was just about her not winning the co-leadership.

Julian Robbins: Is the Green Party losing its radical edge?…. Is it coming into a sort of comfortable middle age, a professional phase where it tries to be less risk-taking?

Sue Bradford: I think that’s absolutely true…. We did have a real radical cutting edge [in 1999]… I think that we have, to some extent we have begun to lose a little bit of that differentiation with the other parties in Parliament – in terms of being a little less willing to take risks; a little less willing to be radical and “out there”; and the sense that too many political parties – including perhaps our own – are focused on winning the middle ground voters and not seeing the voters out to the sides – in our case, out to the left, and to the environmental left, as being as important as the voters that are in the middle and to the right.

Not exactly a vote of confidence in the leadership.

Julian Robbins: Is the party really ‘fine’? I would have thought that at a time when the Labour Party is at a lower ebb and climate change as an issue as an item is at the top of the agenda, that the Green Party should perhaps be doing much better than it is. Why isn’t it doing much better?
Sue Bradford: …I’ve just given some of the ideas that I have about that. I think that part of the reason for that [lack of political success is] is that we’ve lost the radical edge and we’ve lost some of the points of differentiation with the other parties…

Bradford’s valedictory speech could be interesting.

Also people will be interested in a draft of an article on how the Electoral Finance Act impacted on third parties last year.

So far we have:

• Green’s 2008 campaign
• Labour’s 2008 campaign
• National‘s 2008 campaign

His topic was “What’s left in 2009 in New Zealand?”. It is too long to try and paraphrase but I found it very interesting. Bryce is a big fan of Bruce Jesson and quotes him often.

There was one notable exception. No Right Turn has, not surprisingly, covered Field in detail from the very first allegations, and decried both Field and his apologists.He was the first to suggest Field’s action represented criminal offending – back in Sep 2005.

Some extracts from what he said back then:

On 8 August 2006:

It’s official: the Labour Party supports corruption. That’s the only conclusion that can be drawn from Helen Clark’s refusal to consider internally censuring corrupt MP Taito Philip Field. …

I expect all political parties in New Zealand to take a hard line against corruption, and when this sort of case comes up, to condemn it and any member involved. Labour’s refusal to do so sends a clear message: that they will turn a blind eye to corruption in order to retain power. This is simply unacceptable, and such a party is not worthy of anyone’s vote.

And on 15 August 2006:

As for the argument that a by-election would threaten the government’s majority, what of it? There are some things more important than being in government – and maintaining the integrity of our political system against corruption is one of them. If Labour can’t stay in power except by looking the other way on this sort of thing, then arguably it shouldn’t be in power at all.

Also of interest in a post from Bryce Edwards, who quotes David Lange in 1997 highlighting dodgy electoral spending and donations returns from Field in 1996. Even back then people were raising issues.

UPDATE: Another honourable exception to the silence was Jeremy Greenbrook-Held. He said in July 2006:

I’m embarrassed that I’m a member of the same political party as this man, and, for the record, would love to see a full privilages committee inquiry into his conduct as an MP. It is not worth loosing Margaret Wilson as speaker to cover this up.

How well were electronic forms of politics utilised in last year’s general election? How effectively did the political parties and electorate candidates use websites, email, social networking in their campaigning? What about bloggers and the mainstream media? These questions are addressed in a chapter by Peter John Chen about ‘the role, use and impact of online media in New Zealand’s 2008 election’, published in Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig of the University of Otago Politics department). This blog post is the fourth of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book (which I also have a chapter in).

Most of the focus is on how parties and candidates used online media, rather than the role of blogs by non candidates. Still very interesting. Labour gets caned for their 2008 e-campaign. No surprise as they had three different websites running.

They also reveal Labour spent around 10% of its advertising budget online and National spent zero.

Therefore it has to be asked, are all the non-Auckland MPs that are currently flooding into the Mt Albert electorate, doing so via taxpayer funding? Is the Green candidate, and Wellington-based MP, Russel Norman really paying his own way to Auckland and finding his own accommodation during his campaigning?

Good questions.

In Mt Albert there are currently a large number of MPs flooding into the electorate to campaign on behalf of their respective candidates. So far, many of these have been non-Auckland MPs, and therefore likely to be using Parliamentary Service funds to be there.

The one particular non-Auckland MP that appears to have been there the most has been Wellington-based MP Russel Norman – in fact Norman is the only non-Auckland MP running in the electorate. While there is nothing particularly wrong with carpetbagging per se – a ‘term is sometimes used derisively to refer to a politician who runs for public office in an area in which he or she is not originally from and/or has only lived for a very short time’ – most people would in fact have a problem with such carpetbagging being funded by taxpayers. It is therefore Norman that should be the most upfront about who’s paying his way.

There’s another reason that Russel Norman should be called to account for his election spending. More than any other politician – other than perhaps Winston Peters – Norman has been the most populist campaigner on issues of ‘money in politics’. He probably pushed harder than any other for the Electoral Finance Act – even though it proved to be a spectacular ‘own goal’ – and has continued to be the most sanctimonious MP (since Peters) about transparency. He’s probably made more allegations against other MPs and parties than anyone (again, except Winston Peters).

Thus this stone-thrower needs to show that he doesn’t also live in a glass house. Therefore Norman should declare whether he has used any taxpayer funds on his campaign, including travel expenses and accommodation claims for his many, many trips to Mt Albert since Helen Clark announced her departure from Parliament. Anything less than this would make his various campaigns against ‘corruption’ seem rather hollow.

Will the Greens practice what they preach?

Likewise, the other parliamentary parties need to be more upfront about their use of backdoor state funding and MP expenses in their campaigns. Labour needs to show that it has learnt its lessons over the EFA and its pledge card. What about Trevor Mallard, who was recently blogging about his experience on the campaign trail? There seem to be a lot of non-Auckland MPs in Mt Albert recently. Unless they are paying their own way, or legitimately and genuinely in Auckland on other business, their use of tax-payer funding to campaign could be classified as ‘corrupt’. And National and the other parties should also declare how they are paying to send MPs into the electorate to campaign.

I recommend people read the full post – it has mounds of historical infoformation also.

• Total candidate expenditure is $2.26m
• Total disclosed donations to candidates is $1.26m
• Average spent for a winning candidate is $12,836
• In only 38 out of 70 (54%) electorates, did the candidate spending the most money win!!
• The top five spending candidates all lost – Russell Fairbrother, Paul Adams, Nicky Wagner, Ron Mark and Stephen Franks
• Only 2 of the top ten winning candidates won their seats, and only seven of the top 20.

Bryce also has calculated the average spending per candidate for each party.

The amount spent by candidates on Internet advertising was interesting for me. The top spenders:

1. Charles Chauvel $5,551
2. Jills Angus Burney $2,658
3. Brendon Burns $2,250
4. Pita Sharples $,2000
5. Aaron Gilmore $1,318

What did Charles spend $5,551 on?

The email from Norman, which was sent to Edwards, and which he kindly forwarded to me, is rather extraordinary, and gives an interesting insight into how thin skinned the Greens (or Norman anyway) is of dissenting views. Despite having a PhD himself, Norman is clearly he’s no fan of academic freedom. Edwards has been widely published and reported on in the area of political finance, yet according to Norman, Edwards, “lacks academic credibility in this area”. Could it be that Norman still can’t handle having the EFA criticized? It seems that Norman and the Greens have dug themselves into a hole on the EFA, and while everyone other former fan of the now-repealed legislation has given up trying to defend the indefensible, the Greens are tying themselves up in knots over it all. They are in a political bunker on the EFA and the idea of an opponent of the EFA researching the effect of the legislation is just too much for them.

Worse than that – in Russel Norman’s view – Edwards has said some critical things about the Greens on his blog! Oh dear. Norman says in his email to Edwards, which Norman also creepily sent to the book editors, ‘you have demonstrated a long history of bias against the Green Party, and you have consistently made untrue statements about the Green Party’. Geez, is Norman turning into Winston Peters?! Norman says: ‘Your previous writing leads me to the view that you are simply unable to give a dispassionate academic account of the EFA’s impact on political parties due both to your virulent opposition to the EFA and to your one-sided and inaccurate commentary on the EFA and the Green Party’. Norman or his staff seemingly went through two and a half years of writings by Edwards to compile their dossier on him.

In fact Norman’s email tirade reads like something Rob Muldoon might have said when he was at his worst. The National Party gets requests from lefty academics all the time, but I doubt that the party then sends out hostile replies that question the academic’s integrity because they might be politically biased! I thought that everyone now accepts that academics have their own biases and that for them to pretend otherwise is just a sham.

Put it like this. Jane Kelsey has well known views on free trade. Think how much outrage there would be if the leader of the National Party fired off an e-mail to senior academics saying Kelsey should not be allowed to publish academic reseaerch on free trade, because she doesn’t support it, and she is biased against parties that do support it? There would be an avalanche of outrage – the Association of University Staff would leap in to defend academic freedom etc. Luckily most National MPs have better things to do than try and get academics prevented from publishing academic research.

And funnily enough, Russel Norman’s nasty little email was actually in response to Edwards kindly inviting Norman to have an input into his research. Considering the Green Party had problems obeying the EFA, I would have thought they would have wanted to detail these problems so a replacement law can avoid the mistakes of the EFA.

Nowadays he is very respectable managing the Clubs and Socs Centre, and is filling in for a year as the General Manager of OUSA. After drinks at the staff club with Ross and Andrew Geddis, I headed to the Cook to meet bloggers Bryce Edwards and Geoffrey Miller. Geoffrey does the ACT Watch blog “From Douglas to Dancing” and is just visiting Dunedin from Germany where he normally resides. Also in the group was a young Austrian socialist, who is here as part of her “masculinity studies” academic research. What a great research topic I thought – so she gets to study Kiwi males out on the town

After a few drinks at the Captain Cook we went to Mou Very – the self titled Smallest Bar in the Universe.

It was here that the Austrian gained the impression that I am a famous person. As we squeezed through the alleyway, a guy in the alleyway looked at me and asked if I was David Farrar. Then as we went outside, I had a brief chat with the owner (who I had done some polling for in 2007 when he stood for Mayor). Then we sat down on the pavement seats and were engaged in an animated discussion when a gentleman walking past stopped and asked the group if one of us was David Farrar, as he had heard me on National Radio but did not know what I looked like. God – I know my voice can be distinctive but that is weird to be recognised on voice alone. The gentleman was actually visiting from Timaru. Then finally a few minutes after that a IT tech and his girlfriend passed by and greeted me.

We then headed further south to the Octagon and went to Pequeno, where the stag party had been the night before. The waitress of course greeted me by name, further cementing the impression everyone in Dunedin knows me. We then took a corner booth and had several rounds of cocktails.  Pequeno is a gorgeous hidden away bar, and I recommend it thoroughly to anyone else visiting NZ.  The booths even have curtains around them so you can have total privacy. Mind you the staff were a bit alarmed, when we pulled the curtains so we could take a photo of our Austrian colleague’s tatoo!

I am technically half Austrian, so was interesting to talk to about Vienna, as I am planning to visit there next year.

Finally got home on Saturday morning. Partying in Dunedin is proving to be very tiring, and I may need a holiday to recover from it!