Posts by Tom Semmens
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I think Labour has to transform now. The union movement doesn’t justify its constitutional status in the party at the moment. It’s just wrong that Darien Fenton is safe and Carmel Sepuloni is gone. And that Labour’s only new list MP is Andrew Little, who ran a useless campaign in New Plymouth.
The Labour party is, at the moment, now an urban phenomena. Labour was beaten in the cities, but wiped out in the provinces. Apart from the West Coast (which elected a white male Labour MP who is out of favour with the powers that be in Labour) and Plamerston North Labour holds no provincial seats. Even in those two seats, Labour was trounced in the party vote. The sea of blue that engulfs provincial New Zealand is the legacy of the party that your generation were active in helping create (yet, in the end, even you could not be bothered enough to bring yourself to write an actual blog post saying “vote Labour” before polling day on this site). That Labour Party is over. The Labour party is at a dead end at the moment. A party of incumbency protecting, out-of-touch urban liberals at the top running the organisation in the name of the poor and working poor is not a tenable project.
The Clark era is now over, for sure. It delivered nine years of tinkering at the edges neo-liberal managerialist government (papered over with a veneer of social liberalism) at the cost of losing it’s soul in the provinces and amongst the blue collar middle class. I used to think history would judge the economic cowardice of the Clark/Cullen era as the only possible pragmatic response to the neo-liberal juggernaut, but now I am not so sure. Anyway, that is for time to better judge. Right now it is time for Labour to get back to it’s knitting. Let the Greens discover how many votes there are in championing anti-smacking legislation and gay marriage and all that stuff. Labour needs to reconnect with the issues that affect the self-employed Joe Six Packs living life on struggle street.
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Apropos the polls – I think the landline issue is very real. The polling companies claim they correct for this, but they don’t say how. I find it hard to imagine a way of doing this that isn’t voodoo,
I think what they do is simply weight the opinion of those people they do get on landlines more heavily. For example, if they need 24 beneficiaries under the age of thirty but they can only find twelve who answer a landline, then they just double their opinion weights.
i am open to correction on this, but I think that is what happens.
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You know what, Tom, I’m not going to slap you around for buying into that bullshit because I was every bit as deep in the river denial the day before the 2002 election. It’s not pretty to watch, but will pass
it is not just the media I hold to be decadent. I don’t think our politicians have as completely lost their moral compass as a ratings driven fourth estate that preciously stands on principle when its privileges are threatened but also considers Paul Henry to be a suitable commentator on a leaders debate or Michael Laws an excellent radio host or thinks current affairs is best served in prime time with stories of breast enlargements gone wrong.
But none the less, and we can’t get around this, an unfortunate and most insidious byproduct of MMP has been the creation of a decadent class of managerialist politicians who have captured the machinery of our (empowered by MMP with control of the list) elite cadre parties for entirely self-serving ends. I want to retain MMP, but unlike a lot of people I am not that hung up on the mechanism we use to elect our governments. After all, any of the systems on offer – FPP, SM, STV, MMP – can and do produce reasonable electoral outcomes. But if democracy itself is mortally sick – from politicians to the fourth estate – then arguing over MMP vs something else is really akin to arguing over if a Holden or a Ford is the best vehicle for carrying the casket to the cemetery.
We need to seriously address issues of real, organic democracy in this country, from how to re-create mass-participation political parties to reform of the media, party funding and lobbying laws. Otherwise, we will are on a path to revist the 1930s when democracy was seen as discredited in the light of economic crisis and political failure and people will seek other political structures to replace it.
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I tell you what - Farrar's last minute hysterical attack on Winston Peters is the surest sign yet that a) NZ First is over 5% in National's internal polling and b) they are scared shitless.
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The story of this election is going to be a story of the polls. If the polls are to be believed, support has hardly changed for the left/right blocs since 2008 with Labour and the Greens cannibalising each others vote and NZ first – again – flaking off chunks of National’s soft support. But there ciould still just be a joker in the pack if technology has rendered the polling methodologies wrong.
Labour won’t suffer a 2002 type meltdown because Phil Goff is a better man than Bill English, Labour has run a smarter and more imaginative campaign, and Labour has better policies than National while Stephen Joyce sounds like some darkly brooding Tolkienesque wizard, locked up in his tower pouring over polls and focus group results and losing touch with reality.
The day after Goff was made leader of the Labour Party the media decided Labour was going to be humiliated in 2011, a lovely little Goff/English 2002/2011 synergy of ritual media execution followed by (starting with the teatapes) first disillusionment with the government, leading to a cliff hanger in 2014 either way and then a media-led clamour for Labour in 2017, after which the cycle will repeat. For five years we’ve been treated to most of the media being greater or lesser willing participants in being bullied and bribed by the Hollow men into a cult of personality built on negative identity politics whilst lazily regurgitating their long term electoral narrative. It is a charade where the citizens have been reduced to spectators in a horse race reported by a media that is completely decadent and morally dysfunctional, yet we call it “democracy”.
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Pity we don’t have more public broadcasting.
Everytime a citzen says 'Pity we don’t have more public broadcasting' there is a little troll somewhere that falls down dead
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My overall point is the out-of-stepness and tiredness of most of the commentariat
Conservative middle aged white male Jim Mora has two conservative middle aged white men currently on his panel, one of whom (of course) starts the show by complaining about democracy, talking about a leaders debate neither of them watched before they get middle aged white man – wait for it – David Farrar on as the “expert” to discuss the worm’s apparent defiance to obey the collective wisdom of right wing middle aged white men.
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It is a pity that after the return of the writs, the election date is not set for 1095 days hence and a public holiday like Xmas day inked into all our diaries - voting day, a public holiday, where people celebrate democracy and cast a vote.
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Where do people get their ideas from?
Today John Key got a patsy interview with number one fan Paul Holmes, whilst Goff and Peters got Guyon Espiner.
I would bet my house that was arranged before Key would agree to appear. When Key has spent the last three years doing this - and getting away with being treated like some South Pacific Berlusconi by a compliant media - the wonder is 40%+ of New Zealanders still won't vote for him.
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Hard News: A week being a long time in politics, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Sounds very much like a certain puppetmaster Vice President from recent years.
You mean the one who “creates his own reality”?
I have thought for a long time the influence of the ideological and campaigning links developed between the US Republican Party and National/ACT during their long wilderness in opposition through the 2000’s are in serious need of a Hagaresque investigation.