Hard News: Metiria's Problem
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
. sorry .
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
Yeah. It's a strange mix of social liberal 'evidence-based' and radical market. I like some of it, but other bits are ultra-dry market economics.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
It's a strange mix of social liberal 'evidence-based' and radical market.
It seems to be a feature of the petty personality cults that NZ politics throws up. Like Greg O'Connor, whose "progressive" attitude on drug law reform is touted as so compelling that we're encouraged to forget that given the chance he'd arm the police tomorrow.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
The Green Party installed Materia Turei as there co-leader rather than Sue Bradford, who had been seriously working on social welfare. It’s anyone guess why that happened. I guess, they felt like haveing a “rebrand”.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
As far as I've been able to tell, Labour's been losing support to the Green Party on one side, but also to the likes of Nat/NZF because those people are terrified of the Green Party having too much influence on Labour.
What do swing voters fear most from a Govt with the Greens in it? Rubbish mountains & unburied corpses? Losing their homes to interest rates? Losing their homes to "Maori radicals"? Car bans? None of those wash in light of the Great Recession's fallout.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
It's easy to identify problems, much harder in reality to fix them.
And that mix of identity vs class vs environment is a potent brew.
What's beyond doubt is that the longer the quasi-Thatcherist status quo persists, the more likely NZ is open to a "hard Brexit" or hitching a ride on the Trump train, as angry and disaffected left-behinders look for a populist who'll "throw a molotov" at the elites.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
It seems to be a feature of the petty personality cults that NZ politics throws up. Like Greg O'Connor, whose "progressive" attitude on drug law reform is touted as so compelling that we're encouraged to forget that given the chance he'd arm the police tomorrow.
A bit like how Franklin Roosevelt paid lip-service to black civil rights because of the need for conservative Dixiecrat support for the New Deal. Or when Lyndon Johnson introduced the Great Society programme & the Civil Rights Act, only to blow it all with the Vietnam War.
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Re-posting Toby Manhire & Bernard Hickey links (originally posted by Russell & Sacha) - both hit the nail squarely on the head
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2017/08/08/41632/turei-benefit-fraud-backfire
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andin, in reply to
both hit the nail
In both cases a swing and a miss. They'd make lousy carpenters, maybe next weeks columns might prove them better journalists than the moralising horseshit they served up this week
And to Mr Morganfixing the system faults
Is that right! just needs a bit of adjustment, some knob twiddling
WAY TO MISS THE POINT GARETH! -
izogi, in reply to
Like Greg O'Connor, whose "progressive" attitude on drug law reform is touted as so compelling that we're encouraged to forget that given the chance he'd arm the police tomorrow.
Yes but if you're trying to sell a Labour candidate to Ohariu, for which I'm frustrated to be a registered elector (legally!), it almost makes sense.
I don't know what the rest of NZ's like, but National seems to have flooded Ohariu with its billboards compared with most other parties. A week ago I went to visit a friend in Woodridge, which is a dead-end suburb in the sense of there being only one road in and out. I must have counted 5 or 6 National billboards, in a very small space, all set up in people's properties.
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Trevor Nicholls, in reply to
National seems to have flooded Ohariu with its billboards
It's the only electorate round here where National is likely to win the party vote, so it makes sense
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tussock, in reply to
One of the complications with using the historic benefit fraud as a political gimmick, which it is (even when the outcome is intended to feed the poor), is that life on a benefit twenty fives years ago isn’t the same thing as it is now.
In a lot of ways it was worse, early on at least, the recession was very strong, the thing that forced in the rent subsidies was the Meningitis outbreaks spreading from the rather common issues around three families living in a garage, in Auckland.
We didn’t have the same housing shortages then, as we now do. In the mid nineties, it was possible to rent heathy accommodation in Auckland, and have a healthy diat, and do tertiary education whilst on a benefit.
If you had family or friends who could chuck you an extra $20-$50 a week, or you never had to buy yourself clothes or shoes, had someone to drive you around, or someone to provide you with free childcare or whatever else. I studied on a benefit in the early 90's and part of me dropping out was I couldn't afford to feed myself after having the benefit occasionally cut and none of the regular bills stopping. Depression is fun like that, but of course getting diagnosed was impossible while I was still studying.
I accept your anecdote that you knew people who did fine in those circles, maybe it was better where you lived, but it was pretty shit in my social circles, and it's not like I saw much of other beneficiaries given how rarely leaving the house was an option.
And the thing is, it has gotten much worse again under National. The requirements they've put on people, the options they've taken away, it's resulted in a lot more people getting their benefits terminated. That's people with no money for weeks at a time and the bills still rolling in.
I lived that at one point, it is not in any way pleasant, life just gets harder and harder every time that happens, and it's not like you could afford shoes anyway.
Servival is what people who live on the street with mental illness do.
That is of course, part of the conversation about how it's all too easy to get kicked off a benefit in NZ, even when you're obviously mentally ill and incapable of finding work or looking after yourself properly.
But there's a lot of people living in cars now. It's not just the housing shortage, it's way more people than that. People who've had their benefits cut.
It’s just going to feed the benefit bashing trolls.
Fuck the haters, man, they are irrelevant to the conversation.
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Mr Mark, in reply to
Dare I say it ? - find myself largely agreeing with Young Paddy Gower too
"The Greens seem to be in pathological denial about the damage that Turei's benefit fraud admission is doing"
Becomes clearer by the day that the Greens attract a disproportionate number of wishful-magical thinkers - psychologically needing a protective bubble to escape cold hard political reality
Metiria's damaged her party and possibly the electoral fortunes of the wider Left Bloc … reinforces Coalition of Chaos meme & reinforces ugly beneficiary stereotypes held by voters on the Right (& a large slice of the Centre)
Most frustrating of all - the Metiria factor is potentially nullifying the Jacinda factor
Green’s core policy on welfare ? = for the most part laudable (indeed long overdue)
Turei’s PR campaign to promote that policy ? = clumsy, impulsive, self-defeating
Blissfully unaware of wider public opinion - didn't bother to consult publicly available Poll data … If she'd bothered - they could've focused attention on vital issues around welfare, poverty, beneficiaries in far less counter-productive way for Left
With the Greens – it’s like giving kids a box of matches to play with … & on the eve of an Election Campaign after 9 long years in Opposition !
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simon g, in reply to
I'd say the "chaos" is mostly being perpetuated by people shouting "chaos". Some of them (like Patrick Gower) have a vested interest in the "chaos". (As I commented upthread, I don't think Metiria handled it well, but I don't feel the need to repeat that opinion daily as some kind of substitute for actual news).
Oliver Hartwich speaks for me, and more eloquently than I can.
Let's not lose sight of the real issue, which is of course that Brad Butterworth and Russell Coutts are disgraceful traitors to New Zealand, and we should all be furious, and have lots of reckons. Eh, who, what? Well, exactly.
A story dominating media noise doesn't mean it's vital to the future of the country. The country will struggle to remember it soon enough.
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Tom Semmens, in reply to
"Metiria Turei's benefit fraud revelation was an act of political cannibalism that backfired both for her and the centre-left, writes Bernard Hickey"
It seems to me the Greens are getting a lot of rather undeserved sympathy for this whole shemozzle. Lest it be forgotten, this whole affair and it’s aftermath was of their own creation, and boy what a nasty bit of creative work that was. Like an excited bunch of little political Italians, the hand that held the political dagger decided the time was ripe and tried to stick it into the back of its political neighbor and sometime ally Labour. The Greens - for whom Turei, do not forget, was riding point at that time - thought a clumsy power grab would make them look like a bunch of very clever clogs, triumphally marching to the head of the progressive army.
Only the Greens, as is often the case with Greens, are not as half as clever as they think they are and they made the critical strategic error of basing their plans on the assumption their victim would conform to their plans and simply roll over and expire. Only Labour didn’t and it hasn’t, and now the whole damn lot has blown up in their face.
So yeah, the Greens can cry me a river if they want any sympathy or even a bit of understanding. They gambled on a particularly craven stunt of political betrayal to try and win the day, and they lost hard and in being so inept they've also damaged the wider chances of the centre left of gaining power in six weeks.
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Shaun Scott, in reply to
I’d say the “chaos” is mostly being perpetuated by people shouting “chaos”. Some of them (like Patrick Gower) have a vested interest in the “chaos”. (As I commented upthread, I don’t think Metiria handled it well, but I don’t feel the need to repeat that opinion daily as some kind of substitute for actual news).
Absolutely agree- and to further highlight how a very hostile and lazy media are trying to perpetuate the "chaos" message, Duncan Garner on tv3 is just about to come back with "another candidate resigns- more on the chaos". This echoes a totally dishonest "fake news" approach to the news hutt candidate "Suzanne Ruthven is stepping aside. Stuff front page got into "more problems for Greens"- when all it is someone who was not likely to be elected (24 on the list) who has a job she needs to start. Paddy Gower now spinning that it _not_ being a deal to clear the way for labour shows how bad things are for labour and the greens.
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Shaun Scott, in reply to
So yeah, the Greens can cry me a river if they want any sympathy or even a bit of understanding. They gambled on a particularly craven stunt of political betrayal to try and win the day, and they lost hard and in being so inept they’ve also damaged the wider chances of the centre left of gaining power in six weeks.
I really don't think it was craven- "contemptibly lacking in courage". I think it was a genuine attempt at raising an issue, and was the opposite of craven. It was personally courageous of Metiria given there was always going to be some personal attack- even if, as the over the top reactions by some means it was perhaps politically naive. And sadly, many of us on the left have been co-opted to the chaos around it all- the perceived need to defend (or attack) keeps feeding the beast.
The good news stuff for Greens would seem to be the policies around transport that labour have now adopted (light rail), the Nats now talking about improving Water quality (whether or not the policy is significant enough), and that welfare and Poverty is (or was) being seen as an important election issue. (These are all things the greens - and on poverty, Metiria especially has been doing this for years- have been pushing well before the election campaign and they have shifted the discussion in those directions. -
izogi, in reply to
a very hostile and lazy media
Part of it's likely media, but she's also in an unenviable position from a small party where probably 85% of the electorate wouldn't have voted Green anyway. It shouldn't really be a surprise that so much of the coverage, whether traditional or social media or where they mix together, is around people looking for reasons to justify why others shouldn't vote Green.
It's a contrast to when, for example, John Key had to explain away Dirty Politics. Media went crazy over that to try and attack National, but it didn't really work because at the same time there were a lot of people looking for excuses to justify not voting for what they probably saw as an unenviable opposition, right to the extent where saying "but everyone does it!", even if they didn't, somehow became an adequate defence. Winston faces this all the time: Lots of people despise him and are always looking for reasons to say he shouldn't be there, but he can still excel in his smaller bubble because he speaks to his support base and doesn't care about the rest.
I find it really frustrating how all this superficial partisan horse race meta-crap eclipses the discussion about things like poverty and other issues, but maybe that's just me as someone who really would like the discussion to be about poverty, instead of anything but poverty.
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I'm surprised no-one on the centre-left has picked up on the most optimal way out of this situation, which is to refocus public attention on the scale and magnitude of white collar corporate crime in New Zealand, whether it is adequately policed (I suspect not) and how its scale and effects dwarf the crimes of neccessity that underpin most benefit claim infringements. If Labour and the Greens now do that, they can fight their way out of this road bump. Quite frankly, too, aren't some of the anti-Turei headlines rather over the top?
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
but maybe that's just me as someone who really would like the discussion to be about poverty
Nope me too.
And as an aside can people stop saying The Green stole Labour constituency by talking about poverty - because up until then Little had been largely silent. Essentially The Greens picked up a ball that Labour was trying very hard to ignore.
Even now where is Labour's strong policy on social welfare, what exactly is Labour going to specifically do to lift up those who are really struggling. Sure we've heard about housing, which is part of it, and tax fairness, and general stuff that will indirectly help. But frankly right now I want to see some of my tax spent directly and specifically helping the very very poor and the only party willing to suggest that is The Greens.
So hardly cannibalising anything even if Mr Hickey thinks it's a cool headline.
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andin, in reply to
escape cold hard political reality
" There must be some kind of way out of here said the joker to the thief
Theres too much confusion here..."I seem to remember someone banging on about reality, as if only they knew what that was. But it was just a rhetorical flourish to belittle those they disliked and who criticised their actions
wider public opinion
That gormless beast that lifts its dead eyes to give a pointless look into its mindlessness every now and then.
Uninformed and self-interested, pushed that way by unthinking politicians who jumped on some passing bandwagon of belief and expect everyone to go along with them. Just cause they think they know more than they do. Thats their reality. -
Dennis Frank, in reply to
Actually that's a very good point Steven. Imagine if she had entered the new year thinking ahead to the election and how to play her part as a Green leader in the campaign. Realising she was running out of time to champion beneficiaries before her political career ended, she could have decided to do so last summer, got her caucus to endorse her strategy, explained her history and consequent motivation to them.
If they then supported her going public on her past, the election strategy would have been initiated on a consensus basis. Instead, as Kennedy Graham explained to the media, he had been expressing his disapproval privately to the other Green MPs since she announced her stand at our party conference. That means she did not do what the situation obviously required: securing consensus within the caucus before going public with her disclosure. If so, extremely poor political judgment. Even worse, there seems to have been a consequent failure of the party leadership group to manage the consensus process in conformity with the party rules.
I don't regret going online to support her stand on various blogs. I believe beneficiaries deserve to have someone representing them in parliament. I think the moralistic critique that she had received in the media lacks validity. Her substantial problem is that she's using the leftist parliamentary alignment to alienate GP voters in the general public. Gower said this morning that there'll be a TV3 poll tonight but it probably won't have been taken sufficiently recently to tell us how much her strategy has alienated the GP support base. We'll need to wait for another week for the next one to get insight into that.
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https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv-radio/95561985
Less than seven weeks to go until the election, and so far there doesn't seem to be one broadcast interview that's got the audience enthused and infuriated.
But on Tuesday, Morning Report co-host Guyon Espiner's interview with Greens co-leader James Shaw raised a few eyebrows. Shaw appeared to be a little perturbed during the nearly 12-minute-long exchange on Radio NZ dealing with the kerfuffle in the party following co-leader Metiria Turei's admission of benefit fraud, which has led to two MPs getting booted from the party caucus.Susie Ferguson wasn't much better with Metiria this morning - let them finish their sentences!
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Sacha, in reply to
stunt of political betrayal
There's an interesting tendency for some in Labour to regard left-leaning voters as theirs by divine right, to be 'stolen' by other parties.
This Greens policy announcement being over-personalised is not good politics, and it would certainly have cost Labour some votes on both edges but I doubt that was some cunning dastardly intent. More of a cock-up.
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
Action Station put up a Facebook post along those lines, pointing out:
Do you know what's robbing the tax payer? Spending nearly $50 million on benefit fraud investigations, uncovering $24 million and only recovering $5 million.
Yet, tax fraud investigations have uncovered $1.2 billion, spent $169.77 million and recovered $362.8 million.Put another way, for every dollar we spend on investigating welfare discrepancies, we get $0.09, and for tax fraud, we get $6.07!
If you were the Minister of Finance or Revenue, where would you focus your efforts?
And linked to this article;
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