Posts by simon g
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Hard News: All Change, in reply to Tom Semmens,
They may well attack and undermine MMP, but the next election will be fought under the current system, and there won't be any referendum (or even a change without one) until National take power again.
For the past four terms (Clark's last, plus Key's three) there have been numerous occasions when an excited Gower/Dann/predecessor has stood in front of the colourful TV graphics and declared "Our poll says National can govern alone!". Polls showing a minor party under 5%, or National around 50%, have been the siren voices telling National that they can do it without coalition partners. It kept on happening.
But then the actual elections happened instead, featuring those pesky voters deciding for themselves, and it turns out National can't govern alone. Key got there with electorate puppets, but they've gone, bar the irrelevant one they'll probably turf out of Epsom next time.
If the Ardern government runs into serious trouble then National may well be able to get there in 2020 without friends, at which point they will be a majority government, elected under MMP, with a high wasted vote, which is exactly when the case for abolishing MMP will be weakest. Chances are, a single party government would swing opinion back the other way ("Remember the good old days when National had to compromise?").
So yeah, there will be plenty of foot-stomping, but I don't think MMP is going to be ditched any time soon.
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Hard News: All Change, in reply to nzlemming,
Shane Jones is a bigger concern, although I suspect Ron Mark is up to the challenge.
I hope that top of the confidential briefing list for Labour and Green MPs will be "When the press gallery come to you with Jones' latest, do not take bait. Roll eyes, and walk away. Every government will have MPs whose self-regard vastly exceeds their ability, and he will be ours. Leave him to the PM."
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I wish the new government all the best, and if anyone still doubts Ardern's readiness and competence, I'd recommend watching the whole of her press conference from yesterday (thanks RNZ Checkpoint, no thanks TV1, who cut to Hosking instead). Then compare it with any press conference by the President of the USA. Only one of these people is qualified to lead a country, and it's the girly-chicky-babe, not the super-successful businessman with all that "experience".
I'm not dreamy-optimistic, though. I think the government should be able to make some positive changes that last, the kind that National like to oppose and then keep. That's all I really ask for.
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One of the irritating - and downright misleading - aspects of the special votes (or rather, media coverage thereof) is that we get a flurry of pseudo-analysis of "How we voted" in the days immediately after election night, all of it based on incomplete data.
Then when we finally have accurate/complete data, the media have moved on. There are exceptions of course, in academic circles and geek-blogs, but by and large there is far less attention given to the real election result than the partial one.
e.g. We now know that results in Labour-leaning areas like Te Atatu, New Lynn and Palmerston North were not as bad for Labour as it appeared on election night. I say "we know", but sadly most of the public won't.
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Now Robinson's nonsense is the Herald's home page.
And we wonder why public ignorance is so widespread.
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More uninformed expertise:
They didn’t pick up the number of special votes they hoped for. They can’t govern alone with the Greens. More importantly, they can’t govern alone with New Zealand First, which Labour would have been holding out hope for.
Er, Claire, they might realistically have picked up one more seat (= two more in total). The disappointment came on election night, I doubt that anyone in Labour was expecting to make up for that by getting approx 100% of the specials.
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On the one hand, we have a post like this, which analyses the numbers and adds to the sum of public information.
On the other hand, we have a piece like this on Stuff, which pretends to analyse the numbers but manages to ignore all votes falling under the threshold.
One of these people is paid to do this. I hope it's Graeme.
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Speaker: The Government lost the election, in reply to Alfie,
Unfair on Audrey Young. Her summary is factual and fair, it's just filtered through the weekend kids at the Herald online.
It really is an embarrassingly bad website. Errors abound, every day.
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Well done, Graeme.
My thoroughly unscientific sampling of media coverage over the last fortnight has found an abundance of "Are we there yet?" opinion pieces, and a dearth of "Here's where there might be" informed calculations. I'd like to have heard less from the bored kids in the back seat of the car, and more from an adult in the front with a map.
I know the unspellable SL formula doesn't lend itself to TV sound bites, but a decent analysis of the most vulnerable seats (and relevant percentages needed) would have been a lot more informative than Nat-Green fairy tales. Talking to you, 6 pm news shows ...
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In one master stroke, Jim Bolger brilliantly pulls back the curtain on the whole Nat-Green fantasy, by using an analogy so jaw-droppingly absurd that nobody - not even the bored press gallery - can take this story and its promoters seriously any more.
On TV3's The Project Bolger said that the Greens need a Rosa Parks. If they had one, they would negotiate with National.
Credit to Jesse Mulligan for keeping a straight face. The audience couldn't.