Posts by Tom Semmens
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Good old Craig, reliably ignoring the point whilst bitching about how unfair the left is.
Another round in his usual one trick pony of claiming moral equivalence where none exists.
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I suspect Judith Tizard is another victim of the Herald effect.
That and the gossip pages of the Sunday papers, which breathlessly gave Nikki Kaye vast amounts of free PR whilst snidely putting down the sitting MP.
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I didn't say the Maori Party was GOING to make a clean sweep - I said they were LOOKING at making a clean sweep. The tide went out in those two seats as soon they started flirting with National. And these "consultative" hui seems to barely warrant the term, merely a one hour exercise in window dressing with the faithful.
And Deborah - all the Maori Party has done is given National the fig leaf it needs to claim it is centrist, whilst knowing that anything the Maori party baulks at ACT will vote for and vice-versa, and National clearly believes that over three years the corrosive attraction of the baubles of ministerial office will keep the Maori party onboard. After all, what does the National party care if Sharples and co are dumped at the next election in favour of Labour? It'll just reduce the electoral overhang that is against them anyway. It is win-win for National.
In terms of electoral realpolitik the Maori Party just signed their own death warrant.
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I don't get why so many people like Pita Sharples. They seem to assume that because he is a noted academic and wears his heart on his sleeve somehow that makes him a smart and canny politician. To me he comes across as an emotional blusterer and I think he is politically naive.
Tariana Turia was always going to shaft Labour if she could get away with it, and now she has achieved her main political objective of settling her grudge with Helen Clark she is getting out at next election anyway. So if this all goes pear shaped for the Maori Party it won't be Turia carrying the can. The bottom line for the Maori Party is they were looking at a clean sweep of all seven of the Maori seats until they started merely flirting with the idea of an alliance with National. They ended up with five instead, and this deal in my view condemns them as another dead end on the road of Maori Political aspirations.
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With all this talk of the EFA and thresholds and the like no one seems to have noticed the fact that this was the lowest turn out in a nearly a century.
Now, I know some will put it down to grumpy Labour voters staying home, or the bandwagon effect, or whatever. But observing the disconnect in political systems in Europe that use PR I wonder if we are seeing some sort of law of unintended MMP consequences going on here.
Perhaps the perceived convergence of the two main parties towards the centre means voter's think they no longer have a home for their tribal identities, so they disengage from the political process?
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I would steve but I have no idea what you look like.
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*googles expresso-tini*
And now I am trying to work out how I can get back on speaking terms with several of my friends who I told in no uncertain terms to piss off with their gloating text messages last night.
Ah fuck 'em, they can come to me. -
"...So all Labour have to do is stay sane, and not indulge in the kind of blood-letting the left have often loved. Keep on good terms with the Greens and Maori Party, and wait for electoral gravity..."
This is the thing - labour isn't a demoralised or dispirited organisation. it's full of vim and energy and has got lots of enthusiastic supporters. I think that is why the disbelief and disconnect is palpable. But also means that the party will be off the ropes and up and at National from day one. Labour's got unfinished business, and dare i say it - some of its supporters (including some here) who have allowed the complacency of incumbency to dull their political fires a bit might just find the next three years a time that re-ignites their political flamethrowers.
I know saying "What did we do to deserve this?" sounds naff, but I remember the sense of Fin de Siècle when we finally tipped out Shipley, the turning of page in a country whose sense of self belief and self confidence had almost been ground into extinction after 15 years of hard right goverment. In more than just tangible ways, New Zealand today is much happier, better and more just place than in 1999. Nothing like that feeling pervades the country today. To me, this National victory is a a victory for the ugly New Zealander, the boorish provincial mysogynist, the bullying white male, for the snearing tall poppyism of the kiwiblog sewer.
To that end,I am chalking up this loss to the paranoid style of the New Zealand political right achieving ascendency on the back of a media induced collective amnesia.
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I would like to see Cunliffe the leader, he is a remarkably robust debater and he'll really take the fight to the Nats.
It is curious. This election hasn't been greeted with the relief that greeted the end of the hated 1990's National government, or the joy of the change in the US this week. The change seems to be for change's sake. No one seems particularly attached to National, although a lot of their base seems motivated by a fair degree of small minded spite. -
Tizard isn't there - but now Clark has resigned, will she hang around on the back benches or move on ASAP, bringing in Tizard?