I thought that's what Labour had been doing for the last few elections? Deciding that their internal politics are more important than anything else pretty much sums them up.

All those likely Labour voters could elect a Green candidate if they chose to do so anyway, so they'll not necessarily be happy if Labour forced them to do that when they'd already decided they didn't want to.…

So now we have every incentive to vote for the Lab-Nat-Green-Maori Popular Front.

I don't understand a party employing hired guns whose underlying allegiance is to a very different party.

I am quite taken aback at the amount of people in the comment threads who are expressing disgust at the Greens for running a candidate in an electorate they'll not win, accusing…

I thought they wanted to know how big industrial plants use water.

Are the NZ government going to buy these substantial, if dying, assets? Or will they close down -…

Rights to take and use water are available only to New Zealand people (citizens and permanent residents) and New…

I…

How so? Did anyone who dislikes 1080 vote for United Future because of it in recent times? From browsing the various communities, I mostly see anti-1080 crowd backing either Ban1080 or NZ First... but there's been mounting suspicion…

The crime for which this tide of hate would have been proportionate is hard to imagine: in fact, it was spurred by her admission that she committed benefit fraud in the early 90s, a confession she…

And yeah Jane Bowron is all over the…

Gareth Morgan reminds me of that dangerous old fool of the Lange government,…

It's therefore unreasonable and misleading to cite that as an example of the Greens policy (and people) information being out of date. It isn't.

https://www.greens.org.nz/policy

Link, please.

That's fine as long as you trust the party of choice to actually follow through and fight for or implement the policies as advertised.

I've found The Spinoff's Policy tool interesting,…

Where are those headlines proclaiming, "Greens more than double their vote"?

http://www.interest.co.nz/news/89405/jacinda-ardern%E2%80%99s-ascension-leadership-revitalises-labour-2-325-turei-scandal-costs-greens

That said I dislike news reporting of polls – herd mentality and all that.

Ah, the fancy way of saying "there is no alternative" when you want to dodge responsibility for the alternative you've already chosen. YMMV, but I think we've got five weeks to not let Ardern and English slide on that one.

And so what? Let's write the reality check, Winston can stomp his little cloven…

They are increasingly wrong, both inaccurate, that is they fail to predict the actual result, and imprecise, that is they are so variable that anyone with any statistical experience dismisses them as nonsense.

But they influence voters. So something utterly wrong changes…

Peters doesn’t actually have to choose sides at all, of course. in some…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF2UrYSDb3k

Whether in opposition or otherwise the coherent ethics that The Greens have brought to Parliament would be a huge loss for our…

I think…

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11906519

Not that the method should change your view, but do you see it as the Greens having dumped her?

There was obvious internal conflict (esp shown by Graham and Clendon's thing) and maybe that's what you're thinking of, but what I saw…

– dumping Metiria. Frankly, I don't care if she spend her teenage summers interning for the Baader Meinhof. She was their most effective MP and James Shaw is not.
– supporting the repeal of health and safety legislation…

Personally, I'm just going to do something weird and vote for the party whose policies I most agree with.

I'd heard about Auckland's local election, but it wasn't really until Backbenches on Wednesday that I saw Chlöe Swarbrick speaking for the first time. I was impressed with just how informed and assertive she was with the issues she…

It's also equally plausible that enough people might look at a poll that leaves Labour every bit as beholden as National…

It's mostly trivia but yesterday I bothered to google position #75 on the National Party list, Graham Collins. The top result was this Herald article from late last year, where his accusation of physical assault against Michael Wood (whom…

Yep. I think they need about 7% to get both Chloe Swarbrick and Golriz Ghahraman into…

By contrast, if NZ First get the dozen or so MPs currently predicted, the best we…

You what? They weren't even part of that government.

I’d wondered if maybe some former Green respondents had just not wanted to commit to saying Green, but I’m not sure that’s a favourable…

Obviously there is no rule, but a cursory look at the numbers suggests strongly that they will need both the Greens and NZ First to form a government. I mean, are Labour likely to get the largest share of the…

Maybe, maybe not. I'm pretty confident they will bounce back, enough, anyway. But there's no rule that says Labour needs two partners.
Speculating ahead,…

It's could be a temporary dip or a margin of error thing, but whenever I see something like this, I wonder if the whole 5% thing in a poll must cause people to reconsider if they want to risk…

You do realise that The Greens are a political party, I assume? The entire point…

You're neither entirely wrong nor entirely right. Which is true of almost everyone expressing opinions.

However, the question for me is "Is what we are focusing on going to improve the well-being of New Zealanders?"

What has made me angry and upset is that rather than…

This.…

You know – for the public…

One of my colleagues spent several hours buried in the National Library this week trying to track down her flatmates from that time.

As I've said repeatedly, wouldn't it be nice if as much deep investigative journalism went into exposing the prominent men (including one of our self-appointed media moralists,…

Apart from the token bleeding heart "poor are always with us" window dressing, Macdonald's contribution to the pile-on is the kind…

One of my colleagues spent several hours buried in the National Library this week trying to track down her flatmates from that time.

While all this was happening, the Panama Papers fallout continued, reported by a few (Matt Nippert),…

Pretty much sums up my view on this whole sorry affair.

Here are the names of all the MPs in Parliament when Metiria entered, after the 2002 election.

If you take a moment to scroll down that list, you will find about…

I wouldn’t ask her to resign for THAT. No. But IMO that is stupid.

But she is taking one for the team because her benefit situation will drag…

If anybody from the electoral commisssion, a law professor, or anyone else with relevant perspective held that view, I would listen. So far, all I've heard is sanity – we'd lose a hundred MPs overnight if that…

I think the issue was that some within her whanau had a different perception of what went on to that of Turei.

I don’t know the truth of the matter but I do know that Turei was determined to stay…

I suspect the full weight of the party’s legal arm will only be on it up to the election and if they remain in power. If they lose the election, she’ll be a…

If I recall correctly, English had been claiming the…

I don't think anything else will come out. Someone had contacted John Campbell today to say that Metiria's child's grandparents had provided support. She confirmed on Checkpoint that there was no direct…

Or possibly from having worked with her they had doubts about her reliability.

But for whatever reason their judgment…

I see it more as Shaw reacted to an ultimatum from a couple of whiners by saying "sure, take your bat and ball" and they did. They were…

Does it offend your delicate sensibilities?
I fear the crowing will get louder
Oh has already

And her explanation of why she resigned – to protect her whanau – might be even more troubling if it does turn out members of her whanau had a different version of what went on to her.

And Shaw is…

Because that was a very confusing law about how…

That's class war for you.

I'm speechless. More or less demonstrates in the ugliest of ways, just how good NZ society at large is at the successful persecution of the poor.

But for me it's simple…

Too late. Metiria has just told John Campbell that she's taking her name off the list and resigning from Parliament.

A very good person gone. For all the wrong reasons. Bugger!

Campbell's interview is still going. He's giving her plenty of room to talk.

According…

Please provide any evidence beyond your reckons that this was their intent.

Oh come now, you surely don't believe that? The timing, the content and the target…

Would it necessarily? Lost votes, sure, but advantaging the incumbents? I've seen assumptions that TOP's getting so much support from traditional Green voters…

In Ohariu last year I remember people being distraught that all those Tane Woodley (G) voters hadn't voted for Anderson (L) and kicked Dunne out, but there's…

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…

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…

" 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…

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…

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…

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…

"The Greens seem to be in pathological denial about the damage that Turei's benefit fraud admission is doing"

http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/election/2017/08/patrick-gower-metiria-turei-is-causing-the-greens-to-self-destruct.html

Becomes clearer by the day that the Greens attract a disproportionate number of wishful-magical thinkers -…

It's the only electorate round here where National is likely to win the party vote, so it makes sense

Yes but if you're trying to sell a Labour candidate to Ohariu, for which I'm frustrated to be a registered elector…

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 Morgan fixing the system faults

Is that right! just needs a bit of…

https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/07-08-2017/the-greens-are-in-disarray-leaving-the-left-resurgence-hanging-by-a-thread/

https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2017/08/08/41632/turei-benefit-fraud-backfire

A bit like how Franklin…

What do swing voters fear most from a Govt…

[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_Bradford|"In 2009 Sue Bradford ran unsuccessfully against Metiria Turei to replace Jeanette Fitzsimons for the…

I love the concept of a UBI. TOP's UBI is impossible to live on,…

That's the thing that attracted me about TOP – their UBI policy gets rid of all that (it basically removes…

In the mid-90s I met a prosperous though mildly malcontented tradie who told me that voting was a waste of time. What the country needed was "the Warehouse guy telling us what to do". Around a decade later when our paths crossed again I asked…

I've been toying with the idea of TOP, and I often sympathise with or at least tolerate what the likes of Gareth Morgan have to say about things. But today I was casually…

There but before the grace…

This is just the John Key grew up in a state house and made millions and became PM so anyone can do it argument, really.

'Normal' yes, right no. The parlous current state of our political media was a known quantity before this whole palaver started.

Ref: http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/201853999/manurewa-voters-have-their-say-on-turei-s-benefit-fraud

The problem as always is a lazy, under-resourced, inexperienced media.

It was always much easier to chase after the "Meteria story" than to dive into the morass of our welfare system and drag the problems into the…

Metiria is shining the public spotlight on this ugly corner of our society at risk to her own future, that makes her…

Perhaps a lesson that could be taken by Kennedy Graham who was all over the media telling party activists to "stop inflaming" a fire he started and plenty…

"I will never condemn a beneficiary for working as hard as they can to put food on the table and a roof over their head."

While Turei said she…

I was on a benefit with children in the nineties, and I can remember standing in the kitchen of our tiny ex-state-house rental crying because Plunket…

Maybe she has, but in the mess of so many people screaming that she has, I can't seem to find a clear reference.

The most I've found with a moderate search is her saying that she doesn't…

folks that it seems want to be polarised

I wonder if there was any moral anguishing by the axeman as he stepped up to chop someones hand off for stealing bread to feed a family. Yes, that has happened in our not so glorious past as a…

Hear, hear.

Like a night light but really scary.

If a party of like minds and of high principle can so quickly fall into bitter factional infighting what hope that national politics could ever be smooth and easy.

It's easy to identify problems, much…

+1

Espiner demanding a simplistic yes/no answer from Shaw while continually talking over him…

That's basically every week. But yeah, he was turning it up today.

She was impressive – and showed a degree of grace that perhaps some of the party’s activists could take a lesson from.

I happen to know that…

As far as I've been able to tell, Labour's been losing support to the Green Party…

It's not going to happen, and Hooton knows that.

He would extract more by leaving silences for…

Yes, I hope their general manager got a telling off about talking out of line too.

James Shaw interrogated by Guyon Espiner about the internal process (12min audio).