Kiwiblog

John Tamihere writes in the Sunday News:

Labour is now polling on average around 30%.

How did it come to be in such a difficult position? A number of factors ensure it does not present itself as a viable alternative Government.

The first was the takeover of the Labour Party machine by Helen Clark supporters Margaret Wilson, Ruth Dyson and Maryann Street from 1991. The full takeover occurred in 1993 when Clark secured leadership of the Parliamentary Labour team. The control of any party or organisation by one leader ensures new talent will always find it hard to make ground.

Politics is the opposite of normal good practice, where you bring on merit and talent as a survival and succession method.

I’ve noticed there are two sorts of leaders in politics. Those who try to bury potential successors, and those who promote them.

Another factor which can solely be attributed to Clark and her lieutenants was the destruction of any overt, robust, healthy contest of ideas. Instead of debating a cohesive and comprehensive ideology that defined what modern Labour stood for and how it was going to advance and implement that, Clark saw this very necessary conversation as a challenge to her leadership. The notion of left and right-wing factions in the party was done away with.

The Labour Party was broken up into a number of interest groups, in effect powerful lobby groups that chose the lacklustre party list. The interest groups are the women’s division, the gay division, the Pacific Island division, the Maori division – you get the picture.

Labour’s list in 2008 was bold and got in some needed new talent. However their 2011 list is indeed lacklustre.

Former Labour MP John Tamihere writes:

I support the partial sale of these assets regardless.

Majority ownership will be held by the New Zealand Government. New Zealand money, which is flooding offshore to invest in foreign economies, will have blue chip assets to invest in at home, whether they are Kiwi Saver or New Zealand superannuation dollars or dollars that would normally have flowed  to the failed finance sector. All require a safe investment haven and this policy provides that.

Further, it lessens our need to borrow and this will also lessen the amount of interest we need to pay.

No surprise that John Tamihere supports part-sales – he can say what he thinks now he is out of Parliament. I’d say it is almost a certainity that Phil Goff deep down supports it also, considering he was such an enthusiastic supporter of full sales previously. Of course he could never say so publicly.

Andrea Vance at Stuff reports:

Labour leader Phil Goff has admitted National’s Hekia Parata could win the Mana by-election if turnout is low.

His press secretary, Kris Faafoi, is standing for the seat, traditionally seen as a Labour stronghold. But yesterday Mr Goff said a low turnout would “jeopardise Labour’s hold on the seat”.

Goff is trying to do two things here. The first is to motivate Labour supporters to turn out and vote. He is right – turnout is important.

The second is he is trying to make the seat sound marginal, so that if Labour’s majority is slashed, it does not reflect so badly on them.

Mana is one of their safest seats. It (and its predecessors) have never been held by National. Mana has a larger majority than Lianne Dalziel in Christchurch East, Trevor Mallard in Hutt South and Jim Anderton in Wigram.

A few people point to the party vote margin at 2,500 and say this means it is not safe for Labour. But they make a fatal mistake. The releveant comparison with the party vote is between right and left, as both right and left voters will vote tactically on the electorate candidate (many green voters vote for a labour candidate and many ACT voters vote for a National candidate).

So what was the party vote for the right in 2008 in Mana? 39%. And the left vote? 53%.

In the median electorates, the right is 8% ahead of the left on the 2008 party vote. In Mana the right is 14% behind the left on the party vote.

Now this does not mean Hekia can not win. She has been winning endorsements from some non traditional National voters. Even Willie Jackson and John Tamihere have come out and said people should vote for her or Matt McCarten (partly because they fronted up onto their radio show).

But the reality is that no Government has ever won a seat off an Opposition in a by-election. I’ve checked back over 90 years. If Hekia wins, or even comes close, it will be a seismic event.

The HoS reports Chris Carter is close to quitting Parliament:

New Zealand’s first openly gay Cabinet minister is close to quitting Parliament because he is sick of being attacked as a “luxury-loving gay boy”.

Chris will quite Parliament at the next election – because his colleagues are so pissed off at him.

“Do you want to live your life with this stuff going on all the time? You know, I love being an MP. But there might well be a point soon where I think this is just not worth it.”

Yes, how dare one have to endure scrutiny of spending.

But he said the public perception of him as living the high-life at the taxpayer’s expense was grossly inaccurate – and he still drives a 1996 Suzuki Swift.

The only thing grossly inaccurate is Chris’ perception. It is a shame – he used to have a well developed political instinct, but it has deserted him.

“I have lots of faults … but arrogance, pride and love of luxury are not among them.”‘

So why the $6,000 of limo hire?

No other Minister has been “forced” into hiring them, as you claim you were by the Australian Government.

Matt McCarten writes:

This week the credit card expenses came out on Thursday and none of it was good for Labour.

A number of former Labour ministers clearly didn’t know where the line between their public responsibilities and personal luxury needs started and finished. …

But what these ministers didn’t get is there are rightly different standards for them. They are in the privileged positions of being leaders, where their personal ethics and integrity are important no matter what their political stripes. Carelessly using a ministerial card for personal luxuries is thoughtless at best and corrupt at worst.

There are two types of politicians – those that think it’s a privilege to be a representative of the people and those who think it’s a privilege for us to have them. You can guess which category the ministerial card abusers fall under.

As we saw in the previous story.

And Kerre Woodham writes:

Phil Goff thundered sanctimoniously that Heatley’s position went to his head.

He’d barely been minister for a year, Phil Goff expostulated, and his sense of entitlement was such that he ordered two bottles of wine with dinner. Heads should roll, Phil finished.

Well, as sure as the karma bus will make a stop at your door, Labour has found itself having to explain away thousands of dollars worth of credit card bills run up by its former ministers.

Karma indeed.

Chris Carter, the serial trougher, was at it again. Despite being advised repeatedly as to what was appropriate use for his ministerial credit card, and despite being sent the entire parliamentary policy on credit card use, just as a reminder, Chris Carter continually bent the rules.

Movies, flowers, fruit and massages – whether the massages had happy endings isn’t specified on the bill – all popped up on Carter’s credit card.

Oh Kerre. Too much detail.

And the HoS editorial:

The most extraordinary aspect of the scandal over spending irregularities that has destroyed Shane Jones’ leadership aspirations – and possibly his entire political career – is that he ever imagined he might get away with it.

In numerical terms, Jones is not in fact the worst offender in the latest round of revelations: his one-time colleague in Cabinet, Education Minister Chris Carter, actually ran up 33 per cent more than Jones – on flowers, designer clothing and spa treatments.

Most gallingly, he used his ministerial card to buy flowers for Lianne Dalziel after she was sacked as Immigration Minister for lying about having leaked documents to a television channel.

The logic by which he could regard it as a ministerial duty to console a colleague who had sought to deceive the public remains obscure to everybody but him, it appears.

The thought of personally paying for the flowers did not occur I suspect.

… principal among them is the requirement that no personal expenditure be incurred on a ministerial card. That means precisely what it says: it does not mean that it is all right to run up private expenses with the intention of later reimbursing them.

Many of us run two or more plastic cards and make daily decisions about which to use, for reasons of our own personal accounting. It is no great burden to do so, and it is the least we might expect of someone carrying a card for which the taxpayer picks up the tab.

No great burden and very common.

The events of the week have surely irretrievably damaged the mana of a man who was widely tipped to succeed Phil Goff as Labour leader and, in the eyes of many, potentially the country’s first Maori Prime Minister.

Sad though that is, there is a sense here of history repeating itself. Winston Peters and John Tamihere were in their turn cloaked with the mantle of future premiership.

Hmmn, it does seem to be a sort of curse.

And finally the SST reports:

Jones is being urged not to resign as Goff looks set to use the scandal to shake up his front bench.

Jones and Te Atatu MP Chris Carter face demotion tomorrow after Goff’s return to a party in disarray over revelations going back seven years.

The release of credit card receipts last week show Carter notched up bills for limousines, flowers and massages, while Jones watched dozens of pornographic movies. He repaid the money before he handed in his credit card, but Carter is still paying money back.

Jones, who has been tipped as a potential leader, is considering his future, but has ruled out resigning.

Samuels said Jones shouldn’t quit. “He has got leadership qualities I don’t think anybody else in the party has. Many in Maoridom would be very disappointed if he resigned.”

And besides if Jones goes, who else will be there to grant citizenship for Dover’s mates?

Finally John Tamihere writes in Sunday News:

THIS week the Department of Internal Affairs disclosed detailed lists identifying expenditure of ministers in the Labour Government from 2003-2008. I was a minister from 2002-2004.

I had no idea I could order massages, flowers, porn movies and booze galore. The biggest scalp achieved by the clever release of this information was Shane Jones.

While others erred and were arguably worse, particularly Chris Carter, Jones is the big story.

He entered Parliament as the Labour Party attack weapon on the Maori Party and as a person who had huge cross-over appeal into non-Maori communities.

He has Dalmatian ancestry and was gaining significant support for a tilt at the Labour leadership once they lose the 2011 election.

I am not sure Jones was going to wait until 2011.  Phil Goff’s leadership has been made much safer by this.

The question is, can he survive as a politician? He is a list MP and does not have a constituency to fall back on. He is at the whim of the back-room Labour Party machinery.

That machinery is driven predominantly by a group of women who stretch across the gay, union and the woman’s divisions of the party. They control the moderation committee that decides where you sit on the party list. I sat on that committee for the 1999 and 2002 elections.

All of Shane’s colleagues are going to tell him he has a future in politics and not to quit. And then come the 2011 list ranking, he’ll be given an unwinnable place.

John Tamihere writes:

A document was released by a Labour Party member asking how Labour could make itself more relevant and meaningful to the New Zealand population.

The problem the present Labour Party has is it no longer understands who it represents, what it represents, and why it exists.

Over the past 30 years our society has changed dramatically.

The old debates about Labour left and capitalist right are no longer apparent.

The large number of so-called working class people have now migrated to the middle class. As a consequence, describing your politics in a class way is no longer sustainable.

Further, the great socialist and communist experiments – whether in Tanzania, Romania or Russia – have fallen over, most symbolically with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

By default, Labour’s politics are now determined by its well-organised factions – the women’s and gay divisions of the party.

It has drafted in a number of MPs who have studied poverty and the working class but have never come from those areas of difficulty.

It would be interesting to compare how many MPs have working class backgrounds today, as opposed to 20 years ago.

John Tamihere writes in the Sunday News:

There are over 700,000 New Zealanders who have been convicted of drink driving. This is a huge number and while drinking habits and driving habits have changed considerably in the past 30 years we must move to ensure not just the safety of our young, predominantly male drivers, who drink but more particularly we must also protect the innocent driver who often gets caught up in accidents created by young drink drivers. …

It does not matter whether we lower the breath alcohol level, any drink before driving must be met with a severe penalty.

As a consequence, it is pointless having any benchmark that one might risk endeavouring to reach.

It’s better to put all risk out of the way and make it a general rule that any consumption of alcohol means it is illegal to drive a vehicle.

I am surprised John wrote that column without mentioning he has four convictions for drink driving. Now the last one was in 1995, and I don’t mention this to beat up on him. But his column could have been far more powerful if he had mentioned his own past, and how he has learnt the hard way that you shouldn’t drink and drive.

The Herald reports:

Auckland City Mayor John Banks’ campaign team is distancing itself from suggestions of an unusual alliance with former Labour Cabinet minister John Tamihere if Mr Banks wins the mayoral race.

Mr Tamihere’s team had sounded out Mr Banks’ team on the prospects of Mr Tamihere becoming deputy mayor of the new Super City if Mr Banks got the top job, TV3 reported last night.

Mr Banks’ communications adviser, Scott Campbell, later confirmed an approach was made. But he said Mr Banks did not intend to make promises about any appointments.

“We would encourage John Tamihere to stand for the position of mayor. Auckland deserves a contest of ideas and he would have a lot to offer the Auckland Council.”

My gut instinct is John Tamihere would have a very good chance of winning a seat on the Auckland Council. He should bolt in, in a Waitakere seat, and his profile is high enough that he probably could win an at large seat, if they had kept them.

While Banks is not promising anything, it seems obvious that Tamihere is positioning himself to support Banks over Brown, despite their joint Labour heritage.

To some degrees Banks wins either way. If Tamihere just stands for Council, he will have Tamihere’s implicit endorsement which broadens his appeal. If Tamihere stands for Mayor, he is likely to pick up significant support from West and South Auckland, but relatively little from Rodney, North Shore and central Auckland – which should also benefit Banks.

John Tamihere writes:

LABOUR Party leader Phil Goff did an absolute somersault on his party’s position in regard to Foreshore and Seabed matters and Maori matters generally. …

Goff and his attack this week reflects not just a desperate man leading a desperate Party but shows the lack of integrity, credibility and leadership.

It is easy to divide a country, it is tough to unite it. Goff has embarked on a cheap, nasty direction for the Labour Party and I’m glad I’m not a member of it anymore.

You have to wonder why Parekura Horomia, Mita Ririnui and Nanaia Mahuta still remain in a Party that they know took the stick to us whenever a poll came out showing there was a difficulty to matters Maori.

The Foreshore and Seabed Legislation that we voted for is unworkable and unfair. It needs to be repealed and Goff knows that.

Pita Sharples and Tariana Turia are pro-Maori but not anti-Pakeha. Goff and his mates have taken the Maori vote for granted and whilst they can be pro-Pakeha, they are definitely now anti-Maori.

That is harsh criticism, considering it is from no Maori radical, but John Tamihere.

So many comments today. First Cactus Kate comments on Phil Goff’s description of Complainant A is “strikingly beautiful”:

Imagine a man from the centre-right of politics objectifying a woman as “strikingly beautiful”. The left would be outraged.

Is it appropriate for a Party leader to be commenting on the physical appearance of one of his members? A member you are meant to be protecting the identity of? At what point did Goff feel the need to comment at all on her appearance? What possible context would it have been necessary to utter this stupid answer?

Kate mischievously suggests the feminist wing will be so outraged it may be BBQ at Maryan’s place!

The Sunday News reports that Richard’s daughter is standing by him:

THE only child of under-fire former minister Richard Worth claims the businesswoman who filed a complaint with police against her dad “has problems and needs help”.

“He is the best man in the world and I love him so much,” Worth’s 28-year-old daughter Virginia told Sunday News. …

“I am standing by my dad and that is all there is to it,” said Virginia Worth, a Newmarket, Auckland, rental car company manager.

“I am 100 percent confident and sure that everything is going to work out perfectly. I’m very proud of my father and he has been the most amazing and devoted parent anyone could wish for.”

There is enormous sympathy for Lynne and Virgina Worth, having to deal with all this.

John Tamihere writes:

The real target is not Dr Richard Worth or the complainant.

They are but a means to an end in the final game. In fact, they are merely unsuspecting pawns.

The head Labour wants is that of prime minister John Key.

He is new to the rough and tumble of bloodthirsty politics, of being in the gutter and having to slug it out.

While he is undoubtedly an outstanding corporate leader, and as such has had to deal with significant issues in regard to huge volumes of money and large numbers of staff and clients, the real dirty side of politics is now in play.

The question is, can he handle the constant and continual harassment and pressure the opposition will bring to bear? …

We see this by Goff insisting that the Prime Minister of New Zealand has to meet this “strikingly attractive” complainant despite the refusal to supply the text messages in advance.

Kerre Woodham writes:

What on earth would possess a man to think he could engage in this sort of behaviour and get away with it? Especially when one of the women was a Labour Party member.

He should be dismissed for that sort of poor judgment alone. There may well be no law against being a randy old goat but some of the allegations make for very uncomfortable reading.

Bill Ralston pronounces on the handling:

At 9.21 am on June 3, like the rest of the media, I received a short email statement from Richard Worth stating he was resigning his ministerial portfolio and would be making no further comment. Seven minutes later another arrived from Prime Minister John Key’s office saying he had accepted the resignation and would be making no further comment.

Hello? What were they thinking? A minister of the Crown resigns and the Government has nothing to say? Did anyone in the Administration seriously think journalists in newsrooms across the country would simply say, “Hey Richard Worth’s resigned but no one’s talking. Pity, well, where shall we go for lunch today?”

I think most people accept now the original press release was inadequate.

The problem with the Goff allegations is that he told Key only some considerable time, perhaps months, after first receiving the information that an Indian woman alleged Worth repeatedly made sexually inappropriate texts and phone calls to her.

He produced no affidavit from her and no texts were given to support the claim. Key instructed one of his senior staffers to investigate. Worth reportedly denied all, and threatened libel action against the woman. In a case where it was Worth’s word against an anonymous woman, Key was forced to accept his minister’s assurance.

And they still are refusing to provide the texts!

And finally the HoS editorial has some advice:

It is probably telling that, when asked on radio what he would do if criminal charges were laid, Key said that he could not sack Worth twice. It plainly implied that he did sack the minister and allowed the public announcement of a resignation as a face-saving gesture. If so, it is plainly the only slack the PM is cutting him. Helen Clark left a back door ajar or or at least unlocked for errant ministers to return; Key makes it plain that it will be a very cold day in hell before Richard Worth holds a ministerial warrant in one of his Cabinets. …

As to Worth himself, it may be beyond his capability to feel any shame. A man who exudes a sense of entitlement disproportionate to his status, he seems incapable of showing remorse about actions that plainly warrant remorse. After a private trip to India in which he spoke in his capacity as a minister while promoting an aviation company in which he had an interest, he was carpeted by his boss but would only allow, with a pained smile, that there had been a “perception” of a conflict of interest.

Well, the crystal-clear perception in that case was everybody’s but his – and this case is beginning to look remarkably similar. Rather than hide behind the niceties of legal procedure, Worth might like to act like a man: tell the public what he said and wrote, and when and to whom. And then he could explain why he considers it acceptable behaviour for an MP, never mind a minister.

This is Richard’s problem. He has the legal issue and the political issue. The best response to the legal issue is to say nothing, but that is the worst response to the political issue.

The Herald reports:

West Auckland’s Waipareira Trust wants access to hospital maternity wards to start tackling the “drivers of crime” from birth.

The trust’s chief executive, John Tamihere, plans to use a summit meeting on the drivers of crime at Parliament today to propose a radical devolution of welfare funding to community groups.

He wants to be funded to cut youth offending in Waitakere by 5 or 10 per cent by target dates, rather than to work with young offenders only after they have committed crimes.

Sounds good to me.

Mr Tamihere said the current response to crime was ineffective.

“The problem is that there are 173 groups in Waitakere City putting their hands up for youth-related matters. Furthermore, all their services run nine-to-five, not from 10pm to 6am when all the shit happens.

“We are going to roll out a service in the next three months looking at that, and we have 85 Maori wardens and we’ll start to come together.”

He said the trust was “negotiating access to the maternity wards” to start working with problem families from birth.

Those first few years are critical in determining if someone is likely to have a life of crime or a life of work.

An interesting collection in the studio. John Tamihere hosting with Matthew Hooton, Hekia Parata, Derek Fox and Chris Trotter.

Hooton pointed out that National has said it will offer the Maori Party a role, even if they don’t need them to govern. So up to the Maori Party if they want to play ball.

Derek Fox says up to National and Labour to decide what they will do, and they will decide after the election.

Chris Trotter says he used to think National and the Maori Party agreeing to work together in coalition or on confidence and supply as preposterous, but now it is more likely than the Maori Party supporting Labour!!!

Trotter also points out Maori Party will get National to drop Maori seats abolition policy as price of a deal.

Tamihere said Turia favours National, Sharples favours Labour, Flavell is all over the place and Harawira favours a more neutral cross-benches position. Not sure he would know, but an interesting analysis. Derek Fox has just said his analysis is completely at odds with the meetings he has been sitting in. Fox also says he is not conservative and rejects old labels like that.

I am enjoying Tamihere calling Trotter “Trotsky” and telling Matthew “Shut up Hootie” – something Kathryn Ryan probably wishes she could say occassionally

They then turned to Winston and Matthew has a superb quote:

He may use all this publicity to target the mad elderly Pakeha racist vote and get up to 5%

And this is Helen’s coalition partner he is describing!

Hooton points out that Maori Party would be one of many parties if a Labour-led Government is formed but with National could form a majority just with them probably.

Trotter says he thinks Labour does not want to deal with the Maori Party in his view, which is why they need Winston.  If Winston is not there, National can form a stable Government with 46% of the vote.

So Labour is choosing Winston over the Maori Party!

Fox advocates merit of staying on cross-benches to avoid the fate of most minor parties in Government.

An amusing mistake by Hekia Parata as she said John Key had ruled out United Future when she meant NZ First. They joked Peter Dunne had already started slitting his wrists! Parata was very good on the show, and demonstrated why she will probably be a Minister during her first term in Parliament.