Posts by Keir Leslie
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Angus, it isn't like there's a on/off switch, where the stimulus works or doesn't. Unquestionably the stimuli have worked, in that they have rescued jobs and helped the economy. Unquestionably, they didn't go far enough, and the current austerity mania is not helping.
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How would this Bill restrain Parliament? Well, it aims to forbid the introduction of a Budget that doesn't conform. That seems clearly an attempt to restrain Parliaments in the future. Now, we all know that that it is, after all, not going to work. But it is still quite different from laws that constrain the executive.
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Parliament binds future governments to things all the time.
Yes, but a Budget is not an executive thing, it is a Parliamentary thing. So the Public Finance Act can be understood as a way of protecting Parliament's ability to understand and make decisions about proposed Budgets. This proposal is a way of restricting Parliament's ability to make decisions.
Personally, I am quite angry at this, because the proposed cap flies in the face of all best-practice long term national budgeting rules. It is inflexible, arbitrary, partisan and unaware of the underlying demographic and economic cycles.
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Greens to overtake Labour in number of MPs is such an absurd idea it is very hard to take seriously anyone who holds it. Think. This was a very very bad year for the Labour party. The Greens still could not manage much more then ten percent. When Labour rebound, as they inevitably will, they will head back up to 40%, and beyond (and some of those votes will come from the Greens, and that is just the way of the world.) The Greens have little prospect of pulling over 15% for any election in the next ten years.
Further, no the Greens haven't been the government yet, and they never will be the government in the sense that Labour or National will. Everyone knows that the Greens would have to win concessions from the major party. They are not expected to be bound by their manifesto. The major party is expected to be bound by their pre-election policy, and deviation is punished by the the electorate.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to BenWilson,
Tom, I’m yet to be convinced that you know what either the Greens or Labour stand for. The Green Party’s policy is extremely clearly laid out on their website, as it has been for many years now. It has changed a remarkably small amount. What Labour stands for changes every year.
This is roughly akin to comparing the Labour party policy platforms to those of the church, and being shocked that while the church preaches eternal verities the party changes tune every so often. The Labour party changes policy often because the world often changes. The Greens don't have to, because they are in no danger of ever being a government. (In many ways the Green policy platform is a facade. What is actually Green policy is the negotiating posture, and that changes.)
It is also interesting to observe that many people here seem to have this belief that somehow, it isn't fair for the Labour party to go after Green votes, to try and be the biggest possible party. I find that very odd. (The visceral distaste for labour is quite interesting. Labour, unfortunately, are apparently fundamentally stupid, craven, etc etc.)
(sub note re food miles. NZ actually has pretty attractive food miles, given that most NZ farms are within a few hundred kilometres of a port, and NZ land transport is pretty good. I suspect it takes less co2 to get from the Waikato to the Pearl Delta than from many parts of China.)
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Policy is not the problem. The Labour Party has so much policy it isn't funny. (And it is good policy, too!)
What the Labour Party does not have is a translation of that policy into message. And that is largely a failure of the party organisation, and has to be fixed at that level. And a large part of that is process issues, as much as getting mired in process sucks.
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I’m not sure how, given Labour’s current constitution, reform could be achieved, but I am all for it.
Hard work, and lots of organising. (Not a very exciting prospect!) But I think that it is quite possible.
There is an upcoming organisational review. That has to be serious and deep, and can't just be a once-over lightly.
(The Greens do struggle with this, and I don't advocate the Green's method at all. It would be disastrous in the Labour party. )
Personally, I am a big advocate of expanding the role of Conference in the party. It's a good story, and it's a good way of making decisions.
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(And more importantly, if there's anyone that needs to start engaging, it is the Labour Party. The campaign for 2014 starts now, and if Labour works like it did in the last few weeks, it is winnable. If they work like they did for the past few years, it isn't.)
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You seemed to be moving from a discussion of ‘the left’ to an in-depth examination of the Labour party. That they are not the same thing seems highly relevant (even though I appreciate clarity about responsibility) – but please do elaborate on how what you said is completely different.
Because the Greens don't need to do any soul searching: they did really well! The Mana Party likewise. The left actually did reasonably well overall. The Labour Party did badly though. So if there's anyone that needs to think about what happened and why, it's the Labour Party. And it is important not to start fretting about the `left'. The left's just fine. It's the Labour Party that's in trouble.
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whatever
I'm not joking. As far as I can tell that was your main contribution to a coherent conversation I was having with someone else. I am really quite pissed off about it, as you totally misread my words in order to get a rather cheap attack in.