Just Left

Personality Test: Evil Genius!

Apparently I am an Evil Genius:

You are an SEDF--Sober Emotional Destructive Follower. This makes you an evil genius. You are extremely focused and difficult to distract from your tasks. With luck, you have learned to channel your energies into improving your intellect, rather than destroying the weak and unsuspecting.

Your friends may find you remote and a hard nut to crack. Few of your peers know you very well--even those you have known a long time--because you have expert control of the face you put forth to the world. You prefer to observe, calculate, discern and decide. Your decisions are final, and your desire to be right is impenetrable.

You are not to be messed with. You may explode.

Frightening elements of accuracy there!

See here for the test. Thanks to DPF for posting this. (DPF is a SEDL - a dictator.)

Mallard's Treaty Speech

This has been extensively reported this morning in the Dominion Post and the Herald. The papers say:

Race Relations Minister Trevor Mallard has declared himself, and other Pakeha, indigenous New Zealanders along with all Maori. (Dominion Post)

and

It is a myth that the Treaty of Waitangi gives Maori extra rights over other New Zealanders, said Trevor Mallard in his first major speech as Co-ordinating Minister for Race Relations. (NZ Herald)

The actual speech is available here.

Mallard makes some interesting points. Some of these:

How do we build the sort of New Zealand that all reasonable people want to be part of? In my view extremists at both ends of the spectrum don't help us achieve that.

...

The National Party has dug itself into a bunker and thinks there’s a race war going on. National is the North Korea of New Zealand politics. They're spreading fear by threatening to go nuclear on race relations. Such a party cannot create a New Zealand that is unified and at peace with itself.

...

The spirit of the Treaty is about a bond between New Zealanders that should transcend disputes over conflicting intentions and linguistic wrangles over different texts.

...

We have to get over this implicit attitude that “History” just happened to Maori, and that Pakeha history is all either offshore, about fighting in two World Wars, or else is “World History” in which we are only a minor player.

...

New Zealanders do not want to be condemned and cursed as if they are the British imperialist white ascendancy colonialists. We see ourselves as egalitarian, fair-minded people who have little sympathy for elitism.

This speech speaks to me quite strongly. I laughed at Titewhai Harawira's response:

"A cat in a banana box will never be a banana,"

Hers are precisely the kind of views, along with those of people like Don Brash, that threaten to tear this country apart.

Jordan

a 2005 pledge card?

Labour had a pledge card at the 1999 election, with seven key pledges which were reasonably specific. It had another in 2002, which also had seven pledges. They were less specific, and were considered by quite a few people I know as being less effective than the 1999 one.

The pledge cards were a device to give people a tangible set of things Labour could be held to, in an environment where Labour's last stint in Government had been, to many people, a tissue of lies and sell-outs. They achieved that purpose, in combination with the Government's propensity to only proceed on issues in line with its manifesto commitments.

Facing the electorate in 2005, people know what the Government is like; they know its record in delivering on promises made. Thus one key driver for having a pledge card is, to my mind, gone. The remaining benefit is that they are a simple way to hilight some key policies and pledges, that can help set out the agenda for another term in Government.

My personal view is that we should have another one, to starkly set out some key things that form part of a third and fourth term agenda for a Labour led administration.

What are your thoughts? Should Labour have a pledge card in 2005, or is the concept redundant?

Jordan

what's the left for?

I've always been intrigued that the National Party was established to fight socialism and the Labour Party as its main objective. It was clear in the 1930s that the future was left, and the forces of conservatism rallied behind a united platform to oppose that future. By clever accommodation and cooption of some of the left's agenda, National managed to stay in government for all but twelve years in the half century from 1949 to 1999.

It is also clear that now, in the early part of the 21st century, the moral certainty and political programme that motivated both sides of politics in the 1930s is almost entirely absent from public debate or intellectual discourse.

It is as if we've come to a quiet time in the country's ideological development in the aftermath of the liberal splurge of the 1980s and 1990s. Which has got me thinking, really. What is the purpose of the left today? What is our raison d'etre?

I have rarely seen it better put than in Clause 4 of the British Labour Party Constitution:

"The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few. Where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe. And where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect."

If you set aside the politics behind the creation of that clause, it can actually be interpreted in a very radical way.

"by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone..."

A defence of collective values is implicit in a social democratic political project. It drives the investment in public services; support for collective organisation in the workplace; the opening of access and opportunity to all people regardless of their background.

"a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few..."

Something that New Labour in Britain has not achieved; that social democrats everywhere have struggled with; but a core promise of left wing politics. The emancipation and freedom of all people to realise their dreams means that disproportionate influence and power - over production, over distribution, over exchange - cannot be allowed to accumulate in any one part of society, be that an ethnic group, a class group, or whatever.

How you combine that with functional economics in a situation where the world hegemonic power is aggressively militaristic and capitalist is a question I would love to know the answer to.

Anyhow, that'll do for now. What do you think the purpose of the left is today? I'd say there has never been a greater need for us; but that we've never been so on the back foot in many ways. I hope to explore some of those 'back-foot' situations in the next few weeks and months.

Jordan

lab-nat solution?

or not...

One of my friends suggests a Labour-National coalition would be a nice way around this.

Any thoughts people? ;)

NBR Poll - July 04

Here are the results, with the June 2004 figure after in brackets:

Lab - 37.0% (41.0)
Nat - 40.3% (38.4)
NZF - 5.0% (6.3)
Grn - 6.0% (5.8)
ACT - 2.2% (3.0)
UF - 2.8% (2.2)
PC - not mentioned (not mentioned)
MP - 2.7% (1.7)

Poll was of 750 people, +/- 3.6%.

Right track: 54%
Wrong track: 37%
Unsure: 9%

This is a difficult result to interpret; National is up a little, Labour down a little more. National probably drew its increase from NZF and ACT; Labour's loss went to Maori Party and the Greens.

If you had an election out of these results, assuming that Jim Anderton wins Wigram, Peter Dunne wins Ohariu-Belmont, Winston Peters wins Tauranga, Tariana Turia wins Te Tai Hauauru and Labour wins 36 electorate seats (down from today, just a guess), you get:

Labour - 47
Greens - 8
Prog C - 1
(total left - 56)

Maori Party - 3
NZ First - 6
United Future - 4

National - 51
ACT - 0

This does not add up to a stable environment. For National to govern, it would need a deal with both NZ First and United Future (61 seats). For Labour to govern, it would need the Progressives tied up and the Greens in support (56 seats), but still Maori Party AND United Future (63 seats) or Maori Party AND NZ First (65 seats).

"Yuk" isn't too strong a word, and I am sure I am not the only person who feels like that!

I think there is a small boost for National out of the crime speech, as anyone would have expected. But the electorate overall still has not made up its mind it wants to change the Government. It is less grumpy than it was, but it hasn't decided it's time for Labour to be out.

Interesting times!

Jordan

Speeding Pollies

Do I care that Helen Clark was driven fast in Canterbury?

No.

Do I care that Don Brash was driven fast in Wellington?

No.

Does anyone else? If so, why? Who gives a toss? Why is it an issue which has consumed some people's passion to a desperately unhealthy degree?

Why can't people accept that senior public officials have one thing they can't change: time. They have to use it as best they can. Wasting it in transit is not productive.

Surely this is common sense, and not a partisan thing?

Another one bites the dust - 3-2 confirmed

Don Brash Thanks Dr Lynda Scott

Press Release by New Zealand National Party at 12:29, 21-07-2004

National Party Leader Don Brash says he respects and accepts Dr Lynda Scott's decision to stand aside at the next general election.

"It's precisely the time of the electoral cycle when I would expect all MPs to be making decisions about their longer term futures, with the election due in little more than a year.

"Lynda has been an outstanding ambassador for Kaikoura since her election as the local MP in 1999," Dr Brash says.

"I wish to thank her for her contribution to the National Party and for the hard work she has done in the health portfolio."

Dr Brash does not anticipate making any changes to the National Party caucus portfolio responsibilities until a planned reshuffle shortly.

ENDS

Make that 3-2!

So the Lynda Scott stuff is apparently moving more quickly than I had thought. The Herald reports this morning that...

Dr Scott yesterday refused to return Herald calls and her electorate chairman Brian Moore also declined to comment.

Some sources yesterday suggested Dr Scott made the decision after being told by Dr Brash she would not be made health minister if National won the next election. But several party sources said they believed this was unlikely.

And, I forgot that Georgina Beyer (Wairarapa) and Janet Mackey (East Coast) have both announced they are not seeking re-election in 2005.

So the score is confirmed as 3-1 - will National pick up another point this week?

Jordan

One-One - who's next?

So we see Roger Sowry from National deciding to move on to another career, and Mark Peck from Labour deciding the same.

Who's next? Anyone care to speculate?

I've heard rumours about Georgina Te HeuHeu, Lynda Scott (growing in volume on this one), Clem Simich, Nick Smith and Richard Worth on the National side.

Anyone want to speculate on my dear friends in the Labour caucus?

Aren't the Greens losing Ian Ewing-Street? ACT losing Donna Awatere Huata (despite her best efforts)?

Jordan