Tau Henare

What 44.5% means for National

Friday’s Roy Morgan Poll had National down to 44.5%. This means it is down 2.5% on the election.

As far as List MPs go 44.5% means that National will lose 3 to 4 List MPs. On current rankings this means Tau Henare, Chris Auchinvole, Jacqui Blue and Cam Calder would all miss out.

On these numbers National would lose four electorates. Each percentage is worth about 350 votes meaning National would lose the following seats.

Waitakere
Christchurch Central
Waimakariri
Auckland Central

This will likely make it even more difficult for aspiring new candidates to get in on the list as these MPs will get priority over new MPs.

A good start

Jami-lee Ross is happy that Tau Henare’s bill forcing unions to have secret ballots will pass today.

I consider this a good start. There is much to be done to reign in the unions.

Ideas that deserve implementation should be:

  • The removal of affiliate membership from political parties…the only people able to join a political party should be natural persons.
  • The removal of payroll protection for union dues. If unions want to collect cash off workers then they should do so themselves not force the employer to make the contribution ont he employees behalf.
  • Permit donations to political parties to be only from natural persons.

Those three simple measures would tidy up a great deal of our political rorts.

What National losing 4% Means, Ctd

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.

Politician of the Week


Good on ya Tau. Bashing pooftahs is so 1970s.

But what about marriage discrimination in New Zealand?

Fag hag Nikki Kaye wants a big gay mardi gras at the tax payers expense but won’t do anything meaningful to promote the cause of marriage equality, which would cost us all nothing.

An email from an anonymous but reliable source, Ctd

 the tipline

Whale

As your anonymous but reliable senior party source I want to tell you the reason serial rooter Trevor Mallard lost his rag and attacked Tau Henare outside the debating chamber was because Tau goaded him about his rooting of Brenda Lawson in Taupo. Trevor was annoyed with Tau because he didn’t want anyone to know that he was rooting Brenda, as apparently he was also rooting another woman. Or more than one.

Also he was virtually living and travelling backwards and forwards from Taupo, all on the taxpayer, which as you know a very long way from Wainuiomata.

Your friendly anonymous but reliable source.

An email from an anonymous but reliable source, Ctd

 the tipline

Whale

As an anonymous but reliable source I want you to know that when serial rooter Trevor Mallard outed Don Brash for running one up Dianne Foreman, Trev spent the next few weeks crapping himself because a jealous husband in Trev’s electorate sent Don a message telling him that Trev had been tupping his wife.

Don was too much of a gentleman to do anything about it, but Tau Henare has never been concerned about gentlemanly conduct, so goaded Trev and Trev ended up being prosecuted.

Your friendly anonymous and reliable source.

Gee that’s a bit of a conflict of interest, I wonder if even the wife gave two ticks for National after that little episode?

Plays of the Day

It was predictable that Trevor Mallard would cop a shellacking for his scalping, and so it panned out. Gerry Brownlee got in a nice slap on a non-Point of Order.

But it was Steven Joyce, ably assisted by Tau Henare delivered a superb smacking:

Saying what the rest of us think

As is usual these days the only commentators that Red Radio run to are Pinko scum. They clearly don’t like MPs saying what the rest of us where thinking:

Commentators say two National Party MPs showed a lack of judgement in posting tweets implying the guilt of a teenager charged with an attack on a child in Turangi.

Louise Upston and Tau Henare both tweeted their thoughts after an arrest was made on Wednesday.

Both condemned the accused in separate tweets before he stands trial.

Mr Henare would not comment on tape, but said he stood by what he had written.

However, he says on his twitter account that he may have got carried away with the initial tweet.

Ms Upston says she was only trying to show her support for the police who worked on the case.

She does not believe her comments have jeopardised the accused’s chance of a fair trial.

Media law lawyer Steven Price says it’s always inadvisable to make public statements about the guilt or innocence of a person before a trial.

However, he says that the twitter comments are likely to have been forgotten by the time the trial comes.

Media commentator Russell Brown says neither Ms Upston nor Mr Henare have demonstrated respect for the law and its processes.

He says legislators have a responsibility to uphold the law.

Looks like Russell Brown is halting his constant self promoting blog posts about Media 7 and his mum’s lamb chop recipes to get back into politics. He may find that times have moved on and one post a week regurgitating your radio slot really doesn’t cut it anymore.

Steven Price is of course the flea lawyer who tried unsuccessfully to sue me on behalf of Pearl Going.

National’s Maori Caucus Gap

Thanks to seriously and serially inept planning and non existent leadership by National Party President Peter Goodfellow there are now only five members of caucus who are Maori.

Paula Bennett
Hekia Parata
Simon Bridges
Tau Henare
Jami-Lee Ross

Left caucus:

Georgina Te Heu Heu
Aaron Gilmore
Paul Quinn

Thanks to the hopeless candidate college National has become whiter, blokier and less representative of New Zealand. Heads should roll for this, as it is the basic function of the party to bring through good candidates who represent New Zealand.

Mike Williams on Labour’s strategy

Mike Williams has written about Labour’s strategy, or rather, the lack of it:

It also points to a very basic strategic error by the Labour Party’s campaign planners.
It seems that Labour’s strategists decided that it was pointless and possibly counter-productive to attack John Key on the grounds of his stratospheric popularity.

This was probably right but the next decision, to leave Leader Phil Goff largely out of campaign publicity, was plainly a serious mistake. The Party Vote is presidential in nature, and no matter how your leader is scoring in the “beauty contest” it is essential that he or she is top-dead-centre in any campaign.

I take the attitude that Phil Goff was much more saleable than Labour’s strategists assumed, and I think that Goff proved this point late in the campaign.

In Te Atatu, the contrast between the two big parties’ approaches was plain.
National’s hoardings featured John Key and Tau Henare’s smiling faces with the slogan “Party Vote National”, whereas Labour heavily promoted its candidate Phil Twyford without any apparent attempt to feature Goff, or promote a party vote for Labour. The result was entirely predictable with Twyford scoring a heavy victory over Henare and National taking the all-important party vote in the electorate by a country mile.

The same happened all over the country. It was not a local phenomenon.

I think Mike Williams is talking about Trevor Mallard and Grant Robertson when he talks about the “campaign planners”.

Probably the most irritating aspect of this approach is that it exactly duplicated National’s 2002 election strategy and produced the same result. If we don’t learn from history we are doomed to repeat it (or something like that).

Yep, Labour nicked Bill English’s playbook and then implemented it flawlessly with almost the same result.