I wonder which box Peter Goodfellow will tick for the registration form for the Northern Region Cenvention….it seems he ticked Hon. for the South Island Convention by the many accounts to the tipline from members aghast at his crass shamelessness.
What is it with political figures lying about qualifications and titles?
I have mocked Peter “second-hand diesel 7-series” Goodfellow’s optimistic branding as Honourable on the International Democrat Union website a month ago.
Via the tipline, I understand that a Party staffer ‘suggested’ Goodfellew email the IDU Secretary to have the website corrected.
Goodfellow refused, citing that IDU invites bearing his “Honourable” title have already been sent around the world for an IDU meeting junket freebee hosted by National at the end of the month. Perhaps that is why his name tag at the recent South Island Regional Conference likewise bore the Hon. title.
If Peter spent half the time worrying about the strategic quagmire of National rather than how he can make himself look more pretentious, National might have a coalition partner for 2014 or more than a one seat majority…
How disappointed would you be to travel around the world and find out your host wasn’t honourable, but a pretentious little tosser?
Today kicks off regional conference season for National. This conference is in Dunedin, and delegates should ask a few questions rather than lamely sitting there being lectured at:
For Steven Joyce: Who will be National’s Coalition Partners after 2014 that will allow it to continue governing?
For the Prime Minister: When will we stop borrowing $265m a week? And if we went through a massive austerity program would this reduce the level of the dollar and grow the economy through exporting rather than government spending?
For Peter Goodfellow: What is the party doing to recruit good candidates for 2014 when there is very little chance of new candidates getting into parliament unless they win a safe seat?
For Board Members: When will National Party conferences be interesting, rather than just a stage managed show where delegates get lectured from the stage?
For Greg Hamilton: When is the candidates college going to start again or is it going to be a last minute meeting just before the National conference in July?
For MPs: What did they do for recess, and if they took a two week break so soon after the summer recess why?
It’s a well documented fact that Labour Party women aren’t going to be winning any beauty prizes soon (unless there is a category for “unconventional looks”) but the main reason the Red Rooster couldn’t join Labour isn’t the looks, the Red Rooster’s experience suggests that left wing women are dud roots too.
The fact that right wing guys are better lovers is established. Informal studies have found that Republican men are better in the sack and in a study of over 5,000 singles, Match.com found that single conservative Republicans achieve more orgasms during sex.
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But Red Rooster wants to know whether this type of thorough study has been conducted in New Zealand.
Could he be the first to thoroughly analyse National Party ladies v. the Labour competition with the lights out?
The Red Rooster will ensure that the Whale Army can have a definitive answer.
The latest Roy Morgan Poll is out and the pressure builds within Labour as it appears that “The Unfortunate Experiment” hasn’t worked. Roy Morgan Polls are all over the place like a mad woman’s scat but it won’t be helping. It will be interesting to see what the next main network poll says.
If a Tv3 Poll or a TVNZ p[oll likewise shows no or bad movement for Labour’s support then David Shearer’s day are numbered.
Today’s New Zealand Roy Morgan Poll shows increasing support for Prime Minister John Key’s National Party 49.5% (up 5.5% since March 12 – April 1, 2012). Support for Key’s Coalition partners has changed little with the Maori Party 1.5% (unchanged), United Future 1% (up 0.5%) and ACT NZ 0% (down 0.5%).
Support for Labour has fallen 4% to 26.5%, Greens have fallen 4.5% to 12.5% from a record high, New Zealand First 6.5% (up 1.5%), Mana Party 1% (up 0.5%) and Others 1.5% (up 1%).
Eddie/Mallard at The Standard is writing up a storm about a civil war that simply doesn’t exist and dreaming up factions that are a figment of Eddie’s fevered imagination…or is it Trevor Mallard’s fevered imagination.
Eddie/Mallard believe that the factions are:
- the Collins faction – socially conservative, the party’s Christian wing, economically pure (ie neoliberal) but not overly strong economically apart from on decreasing government spending;
- the Brat Pack – socially conservative but also more economically conservative, incrementalists who see the object of politics as being in power, transforming the country gradually, as a glacier carves a valley;
- the Boag/Key faction – socially liberal, economically neoliberal, old guard, who also want power for the long-run – their next star after Key is Hekia Parata;
- the Joyce faction – socially liberal, small business mentality that the rules should be bent or discarded when they get in the way, not really ideological economically but probably tending to the libertarian way.
Where to start…The Brat Pack ceased to exist a long time ago. Tony Ryall does his own thing these days, Nick Smith is damaged goods, Roger Sowry left parliament three elections ago leaving Bill English as the last man standing. The Brat Pack was also a creature of Michelle Boag’s but she is about as popular as herpes right now. Bill English fell out with her a long time ago.
Bizarrely Eddie/Mallard suggest that there is a Boag/Key faction…this is specious. John KEy is his own man and not one to fall for the machination of Michelle Boag, even if she continues to claim that it was she and not my old man that recruited John Key to National. There simply isn’t a Boag/Key faction as Eddie/Mallard presumes. If there was then Bill Birch wouldn’t have been dispatched with a message for Boag telling her to wither and die, and to do it quietly, which was delivered last week.
There isn’t even a Collins or a Joyce faction. Again these are largely a figment of Eddies/Mallards imagination.
Anyway the post suggests that Stephen Joyce and Hekia Parata are the dream team to take over from John Key.
There is are several major flaws in that thinking.
Neither is liked by their peers which is more important than the wishes and dreams of Eddie/Mallard. Also both are List MPs. Stephen Joyce won’t stand in an electorate due to his campaign manager duties and Hekia Parata has tried and failed twice to win a seat.
hard working electorate MPs won’t countenance a duopoly of List MPs leading the party. If they can’t win seats then they shouldn’t be leaders.
Like Trevor Mallard, The Standard never lets the truth get in the way of a good story. Basically The Standard exists in a parallel universe inhabited by few others beyond the deluded Trevor Mallard.
Very few new MPs unless a new MP is selected in a safe blue seat. In 2014 there will be no path into parliament as a new list MP, and you will not win any marginal seats from Labour.
National is useless at looking after potential MPs, bringing them into the fold early and making them feel part of a team. They are more likely to make them feel like second class citizens.
The second class citizen thinks that they might as well not bother running in a red seat or a marginal for National in a losing campaign when they have no chance of getting into parliament. They will think they will be better waiting for National to become popular again, and run then.
Yesterday dealt with the electorate MPs. Four of National’s women will struggle to hold their seats.
National’s List would also be reduced. 4% nominally means 5 MPs, but it could be more or less depending on the success or failure of other parties. The following MPs would not return to parliament on these numbers.
Katrina Shanks
Paul Goldsmith
Tau Henare
Jackie Blue
Cam Calder
The list is a bit more difficult to predict as if National goes into opposition there will be a number of List MPs who resign rather than go into opposition.
I blogged earlier about the need for the Conservatives to find someone to replace David Cameron. So to their membership is feeling disappointed that despite winning the election delivery of core values seems to be stagnant.
This is also reflected outside Parliament, where you don’t have to look very hard for disaffected Conservatives. A friend of mine, an entrepreneur and natural Tory to his fingertips, captured the feeling of alienation recently: “I dislike this Government so much that I would rather have Labour back in. Give me the real Muppet Show, rather than Cameron’s tribute band.”
In many way National is facing the same issues. Take for instance this year at the party conference. The message is being sent out via the caucus that “the caucus doesn’t want changes to the board”. They don’t want to rock the boat.
This is a ridiculous situation. Understandably you wouldn’t want to rock the boat in an election year…but to beg for it the year after an election is silly…if not this year then which year can there be changes…and isn’t it up to the members anyway?
Unfortunately for caucus, they don’t control the party…other than filling the void left by inept leadership from the board. When caucus thinks they control the party it is high time for the party to wrest control back. Continuing with the status quo isn’t an option…stagnation leads to defeat and National desperately needs some proper governance rather than the meddling, backwards looking puffery of the current board and president.
Jane Clifton writes about the ACC leaks and Judith Collins. Clifton wonders why the opprobrium for the leaker when in fact they should be hailed:
Ordinarily, leaks of information from government agencies are held to be a good thing – by pretty much everyone except the Government, which is typically embarrassed by them. In fact, the embarrassment of governments has become a positive incentive for those privy to useful information to tell all early and often. We greet whistle-blowers as heroes, and declare, “Sunlight’s the best disinfectant”, and “What have they got to hide?” – a far cry from the patrician days when Rob Muldoon tutted that folk shouldn’t worry about secret economic and fiscal data because voters “wouldn’t know a deficit if they tripped over one”.
Since 1982’s Official Information Act, we have come to expect that unless there is some drastic menace or injury to be feared from information coming out, then out it must come, if someone asks for it. So, it has been a horrible, almost cultural shock to realise that recent weeks’ leaks from ACC and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade have not been the usual wholesome exposé of information we need to know but a vicious form of warfare in murky sectorial wars.
The ACC is a veritable water feature of leaks, as who knows how many different agendas are at play. But it’s hard to overlook the probability that a lot of the leakage is not wholesomely motivated, but aimed at putting various parties’ pots on covertly. Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff is excavating the murk, and one can only wish her luck.
It has to be said quickly that the leaking of documents in which former ACC Minister Nick Smith made improper intercessions in the case of his friend and National Party colleague Bronwyn Pullar was by any measure a righteous act. That he had to resign over it showed just how badly we deserved to know about those letters.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant..and now we all know about the Pullar/Boag standover schtick. New Zealand politics is all the better for it.
