Just Left

Recovery

As you can imagine, I've got a lot of catching up to do and thinking and conversations to have in mulling over last Saturday's election results.

On a personal level I am pleased I doubled Sir Roger Douglas's candidate vote in Hunua. That was not a surprise but was a relief all the same. When we have the final results I will be able to assess more fully how our campaign went.

Nationally, obviously I am not happy with the result. How could one be, when a government that has been pretty damn good loses? The story of that loss and my views as to why it happened will keep, but let me put it this way: last week, I thought we would end up doing much worse than 34%.

Aspects of the situation are causes for cheer.

The bloody awful Winston Peters is finally out of our Parliament. No longer can he have that platform for the campaigns of hate and deception he has too often rained down upon innocent heads. His absence leaves all of us better off. Long may it continue.

Labour has some excellent new MPs who are really going to make a mark in this 49th Parliament and beyond. Jacinda Ardern, Grant Robertson, Carmel Sepuloni, Clare Curran, Kelvin Davis and others will punch above their weight, and show above all else that Labour's renewal is well under way.

As I get my head around Helen Clark's sudden and shocking resignation as Leader, I'll write about that. Today is not the day, other than to note the immense pride I have in the work she has done over fifteen long years to heal a wounded and broken Labour Party, and to make New Zealand a place we can be proud of. We owe to her the fact that we will be punching back at the Nats from the first day in Parliament, and for our unity and cohesion through a very tough campaign.

Low moments? Helen's departure; the result in Auckland Central; Stevie Chadwick's loss in Rotovegas; the thought of many friends now being jobless.

The one great thing is that the people have made their decision. The decks are swept clean. A holiday can begin, and then the work of renewal, with a new Leader, new party officials, and new energy to get back into a position to implement the progressive agenda.

More later.

"Mary"

Fast paced

There's too much on really to do much blogging which is a shame. Probably back to post something on Sunday.

Why I want a Labour government

In the run and rush of the election campaign, you sometimes lose focus on why we're doing all this work and what it is all for. Which is pretty silly when you think about it: the purpose of progressive politics is change and growth, and that is what we stand for and what should be in our minds all the time.

I thought I'd take a little time to explain to you, dear reader, whatever your age and stage and sort of politics, why it is that I want to see a Labour government after 8 November.

On one level it is very simple. I start from the premise that everyone is equal: that in all our amazing difference and diversity, with our different aims, talents, strengths, weaknesses, ambitions, fears and hopes, there is a thread of moral equality that joins us all as citizens. It's axiomatic: you either believe this is the case or you do not.

The second axiom is that a "Good Society" is one which gives each of us the chance to make the best of ourselves. It does so by ensuring that by working together, we extend to each other opportunities that we would only otherwise enjoy by good fortune or if we came from families who had more than the usual amount of wealth and power. So decent housing, good education, affordable health care, accessible transport: all these should be equally available to everyone and should be provided in such a way that they are not necessarily part of market relationships: their access is not a matter of money or debt or anything else, but part of the common stuff of our citizenship. This will often but not always mean public provision of such services, outside the market, either because that's the most efficient way of providing everyone with access to the service (e.g. ACC, health), or because we have decided that our common ownership and control of it is in the public interest (e.g. railways).

Note carefully: none of this is about telling people how they should live their lives. It is about providing them with opportunities to make the most of themselves, security from the price of failure being so high as to discourage risk and daring, and a simple measure of fairness in making sure everyone has at least a basic standard of living as of right. That is the key difference between social democracy and communitairianism, or Green politics, or more authoritarian left wing politics: our vision of the Good Society is one that treats people as individuals, being as it is a fusion between liberal democracy and socialism.

The third axiom is that our society, based as it is on the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few, does not provide everyone with that equal access to the necessaries of a good life. It is not yet a Good Society. And so it needs to change: more wealth needs to be built, it needs to be more fairly distributed, public services need to be upgraded, the ethic of a caring society needs to be more vigorously argued for and defended.

That change is the business of Labour governments. The current Labour government, a minority coalition as all those of this decade have been, has done a pretty good job of proceeding down this path of building what I see as a Good Society. We are possessed of a leader who is one of the great Prime Ministers of New Zealand's short history, and who has so much more to offer in the service of the public. We have tackled the hard issues: of partnership under the Treaty, of dynamic economic growth, of the needed but sometimes dismissed tolerance and acceptance among all our peoples, of holding our heads up high in the world and standing for the values that define us as a nation.

The last thing New Zealand needs is to sit back and stop that task. Every single period of National government in our history has followed the same pattern: New Zealand moves away from the good society. Rights are diminished for minorities. Economic life gets harder for the poor, nothing changes for the middle class, and the rich get what they want. New Zealand cowers at the feet of "Traditional Allies" like the good little colony we should be.

That is the past. That is not building a society where everyone matters as much as anyone else, and where each one of us can life the life we're capable of. It ignores what we could be, and focuses only on what we are or what we have been. It is a defensive, small minded, selfish approach that leaves New Zealand less than it could become. Tories stand for the past: they stand in opposition to the project I have outlined above.

They stand for less fairness, less opportunity, aged values, and a vision of our country that is firmly looking over its shoulder.

I don't want any of those things. I want New Zealand to keep progressing, to build the Good Society I've sketched above.

That's I want a Labour government after 8 November.

The Home Straight: Locally

Six sleeps to go until election night.

Running a campaign in a rural seat which is a new seat has been interesting, to say the least.

The process of motivating members and finding new ones, building a team around you, finding the money to do the campaign, hoardings sites, putting hoardings up, maintaining them, preparing media releases and newspaper advertisements, speaking at community groups and house meetings, public meetings and speeches, street corner meetings, direct mail coordination and deliveries...

is quite a lot of work. Even when shared among a few key motivated people, it's a big ask. I have learned a lot. I'm pleased with the profile I've had in the local media and at public meetings; I wish I'd had time to be on the stump more fully.

For me, the biggest ups from doing a campaign in a seat like this is learning a stack about a part of the country with which I have only had passing contact. That is, rural areas. Some of the policy areas that matter are very different, or have very different focuses - for instance, emissions trading scheme issues. Many are the same as in urban areas: a focus on quality education, concern about crime, a desire for higher wages and better jobs. Given the importance of rural life and production in New Zealand, I'm very glad to have put my head up in this seat and not in one of the urban blue seats closer to Auckland.

Most pleasingly of all the outcomes, I am glad that there is now a team of people in Hunua to carry on the work of the Labour Party after the election. Paul ain't seen nothing yet.

There is one week to go: sign waving, street corner meetings, waving signs in the mornings and the evenings, downing hoardings on Friday afternoon, and a small but energetic celebration on Saturday night, no matter what happens.

I don't know what the result will be, given that we haven't done any polling. Roger Douglas has the advantage of forty years' practice in this arena, and distinctive policies which are mad but popular in some parts of the seat (e.g. abolishing the ETS, "zero tolerance" on crime), but he is attached to a fringe party and I don't expect to see him do well.

But then, Manurewa was mad enough to elect him for fifteen years. So who can tell!

Public Meetings

In the Hunua campaign, there were a number of public meetings: Pukekohe, Waiuku, Beachlands and most recently Clevedon.

These are great forums in principle but tend to be let down in practice. My main criticism of them as a candidate is twofold:

• Organisers usually give you three minutes to intro yourself and your party with a political statement. You can't make any sensible case for anything in three minutes: you can either try and run out of time, or just spout silly slogans.
• It is not a forum where you can easily critique or interrupt silly things other candidates say: you're meant to hold your tongue.

All the meetings in Hunua were invariably polite affairs, and whether questions came from the floor or in writing, they were about the issues that matter and they give candidates a chance to explain where they come from.

What's struck me is how similar people's concerns are across bigger and smaller towns, and across elections actually. In this election and this electorate, the ETS has been the major issue. That's fair enough given the agricultural base of the seat and the dismal attitude of some of the farming lobbies to the whole issue of climate change.

The others are the old standby's that come up in every election all around New Zealand. We talked about crime, and economic growth, and improving public services. Economic growth. Some foreign policy but not as much as one might like. Often issues of direct economic concern to those in the audience. The security of pensions. The need for more teachers in public schools. And so on.

On many issues Paul Hutchison and I were in agreement: the need for more police and better early intervention to stem crime, for example. On others we were far apart: Paul bashes public servants every chance he gets and goes right to the wire with dismissive comments about the ETS which don't quite fit his leader's policies. Roger provided his own amusements, too often reeling into figures at a rate that just left audiences confused, interspersed with the odd brilliant soundbite, and clearly uncomfortable with his party's "tough on crime" line.

As far as I'm concerned, the more public meetings in a campaign, the better. They make you think. They give you unvarnished feedback. The more you have the less likely you are to get party activists in the majority, and the more impressive the questions that flow.

Most frightening question? "Why do you believe that the climate is changing and that people have anything to do with it - you must be mad to think that."

Most amusing moment: Paul Hutchison attacking ACT's anti-ETS position and Roger firing right back, at Clevedon last night.

Most dismal moment: actually, there weren't any, and that's a damn good thing.

If you attended any good public meetings in your electorate, how did they go?

Responding to the economic crisis II: Job Seekers' Allowance

We are in a lucky spot in New Zealand. Economic growth the past nine years has been well ahead of the previous nine (3.5 versus 2.6%), unemployment has been very low (still only 3.9%, far too low for those who work for the interests of capital to stomach) and the shares of income have become slightly more equal.

There is no doubt though that as the effects of the financial crisis wash over into the real economy, people will lose their jobs. They will do so in a situation of great global uncertainty. They will do so with credit markets tight and house prices falling, which may mean situations where negative equity becomes a problem.

Today as part of its response, Labour announced a new Job Seekers' Allowance.

This will provide up to thirteen weeks' transitional assistance to people who are made redundant (and have been in the workforce for five years or more).

It'll be paid at the same rate as the unemployment benefit, and with the usual one- or two-week standown period.

What makes it different is that it isn't income tested or asset tested - including against your partner's income. So unlike the dole, you have it as of right if you're laid off.

To me that's a nice move: it provides a guaranteed, modest level of support to people who get made redundant, it isn't too expensive (probably around $50m a year), and it's a good idea anyway crisis or none.

I would not want to see anyone proposing a large lump of lard for middle class households who have over-extended themselves, so any cushion should not be income-related or uncapped. This is a modest but reasonable step.

Further details are in PDF format here.

Ratings!

I am in a bind. Even if I thought Labour hadn't handily won a given day in the campaign, I would have to say we had. Being a candidate, if I said otherwise, mainstream media comment might follow, which would not do me or my party any good.

That makes the ratings utterly pointless and without merit.  So there are none from now on.

I'll just much more safely write a post campaign review.

(Responding to DPF and Clint on this. Oh, and Clint, how come you think I lisp? Is that your never-far-from-the-surface homophobia making an appearance?)

days 14 to 15 - Sat 24 to Sun 25 Oct: LABOUR BY A NOSE

I almost declared nobody the winner over the weekend. It seemed to me other than Diwali festivities and all the local campaign work going on, there was nothing particularly substantial. Peter Dunne crawled home to the Nats but that is hardly news; and that's probably the most interesting thing that happened. The RadioNZ debate on foreign affairs issues was pretty good, though it was odd that Winston Peters didn't show up.

The one thing that was substantive and why I give the weekend to Labour was Helen Clark's release of Labour's policy on Maori issues on Sunday, and in particular the commitment she made that Labour will honour the existence of the Maori Seats and never work to remove them without the consent of Maori.

We accept, as a party, that guaranteed representation for the indigenous people is important. So we are relaxed about the seats. They don't need constitutionalising, but they certainly should not be abolished in high handed fashion by the rich and the white, as Mr Key's party would so dearly like to do.

National's starting to panic.

I listented on Friday night to a very rattled John Key being pushed fairly hard by Mary Wilson on Checkpoint.

As the dawning realisation suffuses the right that National isn't going to be able to form a government by itself after the election, Mr Key and his colleagues have decided that a scare campagin is required.

The scare, obviously enough, was about a "five headed monster of the Left". That is to say a Labour, Progressive, Green, NZ First and Maori Party prospective government. Key sought to portray that combination (which, one might note, has the same number of parties as the current government does) as being somehow problematic, and contrasted it with National being able to govern alone.

He also tried to argue, ridiculously, that the National Party, were it to have more votes than Labour but a substantive minority in the new Parliament, would have some kind of "moral mandate" to form a government.

Let's kill both arguments stone dead right here.

On the first point, National won't get enough votes to form anything on its own. The only way National will be able to form a government post-election is if its picks up enough votes and if it is able to form agreements bringing United Future's Peter Dunne, ACT's Rodney Hide and Roger Douglas, and the Maori Party on side to form an administration. Yes, that's four parties folks. A four headed monster of the Right, one might say, if one was after cheap and silly soundbites.

Of course, Key doesn't want you to think about that, because he wants to portray himself as pure as the driven snow. Or something.

On the second and more important point. We live in a democracy where, thanks to MMP, every vote counts. A government is formed when a party or combination of parties have a majority in the House, or arrangements in the House which allow it to advance its programme.

We no longer live in a country where the right wing minority can force its views on a liberal/progressive majority. That of course is why National hates MMP so much and craves with every single sinew to see it destroyed, and a less proportional electoral system implemented to replace it.

So let's be clear. A government led by Labour would have a moral and political mandate after this year's election if Labour had fewer votes than National. It would do so because it had the support of parties which received 50%+ of the vote at the general election.

I don't mind saying this either: it would be immoral for parties of a smaller sort to cave into pressure from "the biggest party" on some spurious claim to a divine right to power dressed up as moral mandate. Please, give me a break.

What the argument tells you most clearly of all, and most interestingly of all, is just how terrified the right are of losing this election. For of course if they do, they will face an uncertain future. They'll have tried lots of money and not enough; they'll have tried men and women; they'll have tried old and young; they'll have tried moderate and radical. All will have been broken on the rock of New Zealand social democracy.

That is a record of failure the conservative forces in this country will be most unwilling to countenance. And that is why I will not be surprised if the election campaign, which so far has been clean and proper to my eyes, takes a turn for the worse as the tide ebbs from the high point of National Party dominance we've seen in the polls over the past year or so. The elites and powerbrokers of the right, who have been assuming that polls equal election results for a long time now, cannot conceive how the labour movement could possibly win again.

Which goes to show you really, just how little they understand ordinary New Zealanders, the labour movement, the Labour Party, or the governments that Helen Clark has led these past nine years.

Long may they remain ignorant.