Monthly Archive for June, 2008

John does a Don

Published
by
all_your_base
on June 30, 2008
in john key, same old national and slippery
. 73 Comments

Remember Noelle McCarthy’s 95bFM interview with Brash in which she got him to admit to knowledge of the Brethren pamphlets? Student radio has done it again.

Hager’s weekend article in the Sunday Star Times detailed an ongoing advisory relationship between the National Party and political consultants Crosby Textor.

But RDU’s Kate Gorgeous asked John Key back in November 2007, “Have you got any advisors round now that are seen in The Hollow Men?”.

Here’s John Key’s reply:

And here’s the full audio from Scoop.

Hollow politics at work

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on June 30, 2008
in education, john key and slippery
. 22 Comments

Brand Key on Waatea news: “A National government will be a lot more demanding about educational standards, a lot more demanding about under-performance in schools, a lot more demanding on failing schools”

There is no ‘how we will fix things’ here, simply a statement of problems. If schools don’t perform would National cut their funding? How would they measure under-performance? What would they do with failing schools?

Classic Crosby/Textor. Another hit and run, an attempt to sow a vague discontent with the current government while offering no answers. Where is the real discussion of problems and how to fix them? Nowhere, because National has no intention of fixing them. The aim is simply to make the current government unpopular and waltz into power as the only alternative.

Nat response to C/T scandal right from C/T playbook

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on June 30, 2008
in john key, slippery and spin
. 33 Comments

There’s a standard formula that Crosby/Textor has its clients use when damaging information comes out.

a) refuse to engage. The most senior public response to the revelation that Brand Key has been created by exactly the same people who ran Brash’s divisive, racist campaign in 2005 has come from Key’s chief of staff. No politician has commented. Key will be forced to comment during his Wednesday interviews but look for another C/T line that he will repeat in every interview – something along the lines of ‘no, look, the real issue here is why Helen Clark is so obsessed with who I get advice from when hardworking Kiwis are suffering from 9 years of overtaxation’.

b) attack the messenger. Off-the-record comments to journos from senior Nats have focused on attacking Hager’s credibility, just as they have with other journos who don’t faithful report the lines (eg Barry Soper, Greg Robertson). As with the Hollow Men, National is spreading rumours that Hager has somehow ’stolen’ National emails. Not only is that claim baseless (the Police concluded there was no theft), it also doesn’t explain who gave Hager faxes, meeting notes, and diaries.

c) misdirection. The ’stolen email’ ruse is being used again. a classic piece of misdirection. Rather than looking at how the public image of Key and National has been created and the tactics they use to shut down the informed debate which is democracy’s life-blood, political commentators are already falling for the misdirection and asking ‘who gave Hager the info’? (any fool knows it’s the English camp).

This is the same formula we saw last week when Key revealed he knows nothing of New Zealand history, the same as we saw when Key said “we would love to see wages drop“, and we’ll see it again every time the mask of Brand Kep slips.

The cost of Crosby/Textor

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on June 30, 2008
in election 2008, john key and slippery
. 57 Comments

So Crosby/Textor has been designing Brand Key from Day 1, isn’t this just what every party does? No, it isn’t - Crosby/Textor uses a particularly undemocratic, nasty form of political marketing (more on that in later posts) and the extent to which National uses Crosby/Textor is simply beyond the financial means of any other party.

Consider this. Crosby/Textor was hired to create the image of Brand Key that we now hear repeated mindlessly in the media (he’s a nice guy, he’s a consensus builder) and make Brand Key the entire basis of debate on National’s re-election campaign back in November 2006. Since then, there have been monthly visits from Textor or other C/T advisors at the cost of $10K per visit (you can tell when they’ve happened, Key has a new line to repeat ad nauseam and speaks more coherently for the next few weeks as he repeats his lines). That’s $200K right there.

Then there’s focus-grouping. The C/T lines that you hear Key repeat come straight from focus grouping. A small focus group run costs $30K and is pretty ineffective, which is why Labour hasn’t done one since December. A decent round of focus groups would cost $50K+ and C/T is conducting them monthly for National’s lines. Already, we’re talking the think end of a million dollars spent by National on Crosby/Textor. No other party can afford to spend a fraction of that amount because they don’t have the large (until now secret) donors.

A political party does not resort to C/T’s expensive, scummy, disrespectful strategy if it can win honestly because, ultimately, C/T politics is very destructive, both for democracy based on an informed populace and for the party that uses it - they end up unprincipled, baseless, a shell of a party with no heart.

But National knows it cannot win on its policies, or its record or the competence of its people. So, unique among New Zealand parties, it is shelling out a fortune for foreign advisors to develop a strategy to pull the wool over voters’ eyes.

Busted

Published
by
IrishBill
on June 29, 2008
in national, slippery and spin
. 119 Comments

Nicky Hager’s piece in today’s Sunday Star Times has confirmed what we all suspected: Crosby Textor are the creators of Brand Key. For those of you unfamiliar with CT, they’re known as the dirtiest and most driven political PR firm in the game. CT specialises in dog-whistle racism, attack politics and pretty much every aspect of the politics of division. Their name is a shorthand for everything that is dirty and venal in politics and their claims to fame include the handling of the Tampa incident during the Aussie 2001 election, being busted for push-polling and the promotion of personal attacks on just about every politician they have ever campaigned against. They were also the brains behind Boris Johnson’s “small target” strategy during the recent London Mayoralty race.

As Hager points out in his article they are also primarily responsible for the hijacking of Helen Clark’s brand and the smearing of her as “out of touch”:

An April 2005 Crosby/Textor report described how the focus group questions probed for latent negative “hesitations or concerns” about her. “Regardless of your overall view of Helen Clark,” the moderator asked, “what would you acknowledge are her weaknesses at the moment, even if they are slight or begrudging weaknesses?” The report’s “strategic opportunities” section concluded that the research revealed “an emerging perception that Helen Clark is too busy with `minorities’ and `other people’ to worry about the concerns and the pressures on `working families’.” They developed a “mantra” about an arrogant and out-of-touch prime minister. “It must be stressed that this sentiment is embryonic and must be consistently demonstrated and leveraged if it is to be effective,” Textor wrote. “These perceptions will not exist and mature on their own.

A casual perusal of the unsubstantiated repetition of this line by nearly every right-wing commenter in our comments threads shows just how successful this tactic has been.

CT are very very good at what they do but let’s be clear, they are not the kind of people it pays to be associated with. That goes a long way to explaining why National have consistently refused to acknowledge their role in the creation of Brand Key. I’ll be very interested to see how this story is received.

Bait and switch

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on June 28, 2008
in election 2008, national and slippery
. 78 Comments

It strikes me there is a disconnect between what prospective National voters expect it to do in government and what it has actually promised it would do. Some examples:

Tax Cuts
How much larger do you expect the tax cut National will offer you will be compared to the ones Labour has announced? $5 a week? $10? Hardly any difference. National supporters weren’t satisfied with Labour’s cuts, they’ll want a significant amount more and such puny offerings would make a mockery of National’s endless fixation on cutting tax. Seems to me they’ve got to offer at least $20 a week more or the expectations of potential voters will be disappointed. How are they going to find the $3 billion needed to satisfy this minimal expectation? Not through cutting ‘waste‘.

Reverse the Child Discipline law
The Bradford amendments to Section 59 pf the Crime Act is one of National supporters’ main bugbears. Despite the fact that National voted for the law, Labour is blamed. Surely, then there is a strong expectation that National will reverse the amendments. But it’s not going to happen. John Key says they would change the law if there was evidence good parents were being criminalised and he says that is not happening.

Lower petrol tax
A common refrain from National supporters is that petrol prices are the fault of taxes (in fact, higher fuel prices reduces government tax revenue and raises its costs). Labour is blamed for this over-taxation and they believe electing National will change this. It won’t. National has repeatedly stated it won’t remove or reduce taxation on fuel.

Power prices
Think power prices are too high? Expect National to lower them? Think again. National has no energy affordability policy. It does, however, have a policy of extracting more profits from SOEs, and the biggest SOEs are Meridian, Genesis, Mercury, and Transpower; National wants power companies to make more profit, from higher prices. It opposes the Electricity Commission, whose reserve generator at Whirinaki gave us a buffer during the recent ‘power crisis’.

It is no coincidence that the expectations of National’s supporters and its actual policies are different. National’s strategy relies on hit and run attacks on the government. This encourages a belief that National has some plan to tackle the problem at isuue when it doesn’t. Securing the votes of people who have expectations that don’t gel with reality, what the Americans call ‘bait and swtich’, underpins National strategy.

So, if you’re thinking of voting National, ask yourself: what do you expect from them and do these expectations match with National’s actual statements?  Or are you falling for the bait?

Geek’s view

Published
by
lprent
on June 28, 2008
in articles, blogs, humour and interweb
. 23 Comments

Lynn PrenticeOn the odd occasion I have time to read outside of the confines of The Standard and its ever increasing brawl of entertaining comments. I noticed we don’t have a external reading list, and it is within the range of my writing skills, so here are my oddities for the slow weekends….

From quote of the day on the Linux test box. It shows a correct appreciation of the art of development.

Scott’s second Law:
When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found
to have been wrong in the first place.
Corollary:
After the correction has been found in error, it will be
impossible to fit the original quantity back into the equation.

Toms Hardware (great site) has a article 10 Ways to Beat the New Hands-Free Laws for the toy freaks on hands-free cellphones for cars. I loved the description of users…

..in recent years, headsets have acquired a nasty stigma. Depending on your point of view, Bluetooth headset wearers might either look like cyborgs, telemarketers or simply jerks.
If you already wear one, don’t take this personally. It’s just that some people have been holding out for as long as possible to avoid looking like unstable people that talk to themselves.

Not only do I get frustrated with microsoft software to the point that I don’t use it - it turns out that Bill Gates has the same kinds of problems. Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant. Very entertaining and I’d hate to moderate the comment stream on that site.

On a more serious note I dug around my favorite site at the Economist to find this gem. Down and dirty on an alternate approach to geothermal energy. We live on top of a slow nuclear reactor called the Earth where heat is generated from the slow breakdown of uranium and other heavy isotopes. Why would you bother with all of the problems with fast nuclear reactions when you can push down pipes in a variation of the mohole project to tap geothermal energy. It is a well known under-utilized technology set that doesn’t have a lot of gotcha’s.

Continue reading ‘Geek’s view’

March GDP figures

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on June 27, 2008
in economy
. 35 Comments

As expected, the economy contracted 0.3% in the March quarter. The drought brought activity in the agricultural sector down after a recent strong run, the housing sector continued to slow off the back of the boom, oil prices are dragging on the economy in general, and mining was down after a surge in the December quarter from oil drilling. The slow-down in net immigration also slowed growth. It is expected that the economy will do better in the June quarter with the record dairy payout, lower business tax, and higher oil receipts coming into play. The Reserve Bank is now more likely to cut interest rates sooner.

Overall, the economy grew 3.0% last year, above the long-run average.

 

(source)
Naturally, National will use these figures for another hit and run attack. This time is would be nice to see them present their answers. I’m dying to know how they would beat peak-oil driven petrol prices, a drought, the credit crunch, and an international housing slow down. Don’t hold your breath though, National has nothing on the economy – they haven’t asked a single question in Parliament on government fiscal policy or the economy since before the Budget, and their ‘economic policy’ fits on the back of a napkin.

[Nat cumulative growth vs Lab here, cumulative GDP per capita growth N vs L here]

Misdirection

Published
by
IrishBill
on June 27, 2008
in john key, national and spin
. 59 Comments

There’s a technique that sits at the heart of conjuring tricks called misdirection – the act of drawing attention away from the trick itself. You all know how it works: the conjurer will flourish a brightly coloured handkerchief in one hand, while the trick is quietly taking place unnoticed in the other.

The same thing happens in spin when a politician wishes to draw attention away from an issue, and National are particularly adept at it. Yesterday’s example of producing a decontextualised quote about the treaty from Cullen in order to draw attention away from Key’s comments was a classic example of misdirection in action, and was very similar to when Key was caught out claiming the Iraq war was over and then tried to claim Labour had said similar things.

But the mother of all misdirections, the one which is probably framed and hanging on Crosby Textor’s office wall of fame, is the “stolen emails” misdirection. Remember that?

Rather than discuss the content of the emails that featured in the Hollow Men, National’s response was to make a huge fuss over the fact that they were “stolen” and make that the story instead. The fact that there has been no evidence produced to prove this and the police believe it was an inside job is irrelevant now because like all of National’s spin their misdirection sits within a greater framework of hit and run PR and they are confident (with considerable reason) that the memory hole will take care of the story if they can get just past it in the short term.

So just remember, when National are making a big song and dance about something it probably pays to watch their other hand.

Roy puts Police informants at risk

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on June 27, 2008
in act and crime
. 12 Comments

ACT is turning to increasingly desperate attempts to win media attention. Raising Roger Douglas from the dead didn’t work (he only got 6 people to come to his latest speech). Now, Heather Roy has named a police informant in Parliament. This pathetic attempt to raise a petty scandal has put the life of the informant in danger and will have a chilling effect on future potential informants. The issue of whether the Police protected the informant when they shouldn’t have ought to have been handled through a non-public inquiry, not Roy’s dangerous grandstanding.

The end result will be to discourage informants, making the Police’s job harder and resulting in more criminals staying free. Good one, Heather.

Nandor’s valedictory

Published
by
all_your_base
on June 27, 2008
in greens
. 19 Comments

Great final speech by the Green MP.

Good interview in the Dom here. Full speech at the Green Party website.

Key’s principled stand

Published
by
Tane
on June 27, 2008
in cartoons, child discipline and john key
. 46 Comments

A good cartoon by Mike Moreu this morning about Key’s confusing stance on the smacking referendum.

Though of course, as a_y_b pointed out yesterday, this approach isn’t at all confusing if all you’re trying to do is to win an election by accentuating and exploiting negative perceptions of your opponent.

Standard Week: 20-27 June 2008

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on June 27, 2008
in standard week
. 0 Comments

Three events this week epitomised the benefits of nine years of centre-left government: the continuing fall in benefit numbers, the Government’s moves to protect workers from being ripped off by labour-hire companies, and the ‘Treelord’ Treaty settlements. If the anti-Maori, anti-worker National party had won power in 2005, we would not have seen these achievements this week. Key, meanwhile, showed why he is regarded as the least qualified potential Prime Minister in living memory with his ignorant comments on New Zealand history. Here are our favourite posts of the week:

The headline you didn’t see
The number of people receiving the unemployment benefit has fallen to just 17,465…benefit numbers have dropped by 120,000 since National was booted out of office.. [more]

PSA broadens tax debate
It’s good to see the PSA broadening the public debate on tax cuts with a UMR poll showing the majority of Kiwis don’t want bigger tax cuts if they come at the expense of public services…[more]

Bill to protect workers from labour-hire vultures
Business New Zealand, always a friend of the ordinary Kiwi, is complaining that these provisions to ensure workers get their basic rights will put the labour hire companies out of business. Good. The labour hire companies are scum. They take advantage of desperate workers and undermine workers’ rights…[more]

Key denies Land Wars
I don’t care how nice your smile is; if you don’t know the first thing about New Zealand history, you’re not in a position to be running this country.… [more]

Protecting Brand Key
For the first second third time, National is trying to shut down the reporting of things they feel don’t cast them in the glowing light they’d prefer…When your image is all you’ve got I guess this shouldn’t come as a surprise… [more]

Drinking Liberally - Auckland
Drinking Liberally brings together people from across the left-leaning wing of the political spectrum for discussion, debate and, well, drinking. The first Auckland event will take place from 7.30pm Wednesday 2 July in the London Bar… [more]

If you want to receive this weekly post by email, just flick us an email at thestandardnz@gmail.com to go on the Standardista list. On becoming a Standardista, you will receive your Standardista cloth cap, ‘how-to’ guide for living a PC life, class consciousness, and Notional Party yo-yo that swings from the right to the centre and back again every three years.*

*you won’t actually get these things, except the class consciousness

Protecting ‘brand Key’

Published
by
all_your_base
on June 26, 2008
in john key and national
. 51 Comments

For the first second third time, National is trying to shut down the reporting of things they feel don’t cast them in the glowing light they’d prefer.

TV3 indicates that National is to make a formal complaint over the reporting of John Key’s ignorant and insulting comments in relation to the ‘peaceful’ settlement of New Zealand.

When your image is all you’ve got I guess this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Protect the brand. Shoot the messenger.

Same thing?

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on June 26, 2008
in history and john key
. 42 Comments

In an attempt to cover for John Key’s ignorance of New Zealand history, National’s Gerry Brownlee has pulled out a quote from Michael Cullen that he asserts says the same thing as the Key quote. You compare: Continue reading ‘Same thing?’

More migration mythbusting

Published
by
all_your_base
on June 26, 2008
in im/migration
. 7 Comments

From Brian Fallow in The Herald on migration and immigration:

…Statistics New Zealand has been comparing last year with previous peak gross outflows, allowing for changes in population size and age-structure.

In unadjusted terms, permanent and long-term departures for Australia last year were just 7 per cent lower than the 1979 peak, but 20 per cent lower if allowance is made for the growth in the population since then.

Compared with the 1988 peak the figures are 9 per cent and 22 per cent respectively.

Adjusting for the size of the population, departure rates of New Zealand citizens to Australia last year were very similar to rates in 2000, the previous peak in departures across the Tasman, Statistics NZ said.

“For both years the [departure] rates across most ages were lower than during the 1988 peak. However, rates in the late teens and 20s for these three years were well below the rates seen during the 1979 peak, when people aged 19 to 24 were more than twice as likely to leave for Australia on a permanent basis than they were in 2007.”

What’s that? So National’s strategy of continually running down New Zealand and the government because of an “exodus” to Australia isn’t really based on fact?

Key denies Land Wars

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on June 26, 2008
in history and john key
. 79 Comments

Mr Key on NewstalkZB: “We’re not a country that’s come about as a result of civil war or where there’s been a lot of fighting internally, we’re, we’re a country which peacefully came together”.

So, the numerous pre-Treaty battles, the Flagstaff War, the Land Wars, Parihaka. decades or warfare in which many tribes lost their entire territory and thousands died - they’re down the memory hole eh? Oh yeah, and then there was the class warfare - Waihi 1912, The Waterfronters vs Massey’s Cossacks, The Despression Riots, The 1951 Lockout, when Prime Minister Holland declared New Zealand “at war” and call out troops against the wharfies.

It’s incredible enough not to remember the Springbok Tour, or whether you took part in an attack on the New Zealand currency, or whether you said “we would love to see wages drop” but not knowing that New Zealand went through decades of warfare in a contest for sovereignty between the Maori and Pakeha takes the cake.

Such ignorance is not befitting of a man who would be Prime Minister. I don’t care how nice your smile is; if you don’t know the first thing about New Zealand history, you’re not in a position to be running this country. Being one dimensional is the cornerstone of Brand Key, but it’s not something we can afford in a Prime Minister.

[For an in-depth analysis of the Land Wars see here or watch Jamie Belich's series]

Ministry advised against concurrent referendum/election

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on June 26, 2008
in child discipline, election 2008 and slippery
. 44 Comments

In line with Ministry of Justice advice, the Government has decided not to hold the child discipline referendum at the same time as the election. You can read the entire advice document here:

Holding a referendum at the same time as the general election is not recommended because 

“From 1999, we know that voters would be confused by the additional voting papers and would ask polling place staff questions about the issues and the process. Voters would take longer to mark their papers They would require help to find the right ballot box in which to place them.This would cause congestion and delays in the polling place.. [ and the count]…More polling place staff, including more inquiry officers, would be required to manage the additional workload…Combining CIR with the general election would increase the complexity of election day staff roles, the length and complexity of the training and the risks of staff training being inadequate “

Which is true. I was a Polling Clerk in 1999 and it was a nightmare.

The myth, invented by David Farrar, that holding a referendum separately from the election is more expensive is dispelled:

“To conduct referenda in conjunction with the 2008 General Election… would cost $7.3m… conducting referenda by postal vote in 2009 [would cost] $6.5m to $8.1″

Why isn’t a concurrent referendum cheaper? You don’t need polling place staff for a postal ballot but need more for one held with the election. 

Predictably, National has used this as another hit and run attack, despite the fact that Key himself said on KiwiFm yesterday ”we’ve got no intention of changing the legislation unless we see good parents being criminalised for lightly smacking a child, and we don’t see any evidence of that”.

Is this really the level our politics has sunk to? Dishonest attacks over the timing of a referendum on a law that doesn’t affect most people and was never intended to affect most people? Does anyone really think this matters? How about a serious debate about wage levels? Of course, National will do anything it can to avoid a debate on serious issues like that, which is why it fills the void with this pathetic pap.

No consistency needed

Published
by
all_your_base
on June 26, 2008
in child discipline, john key and national
. 12 Comments

Colin Espiner’s just posted an entry headed “National’s position on smacking confusing”.

It is - but only if you’re expecting philosophical consistency. Key’s approach isn’t at all confusing if all you’re trying to do is to win an election by accentuating and exploiting negative perceptions of your opponent.

For the time being, this is National’s strategy: consistently brand Labour as wasteful, arrogant, out of touch and so on. To hell with the reality or the detail. Key’s support for the referendum has little, if anything, to do with the issue itself. It’s simply about branding Labour and (particularly) Clark:

…quite frankly the behaviour of the prime minister smacks of arrogance and waste…

Strikes me that the arrogance is actually found in a party who are so disdainful of the electorate that they a) sincerely believe they deserve to run the country without providing a comprehensive policy platform and b) consistently patronise voters with empty slogans and catchphrases.

Calls for Police State ultimate admission of failure

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on June 26, 2008
in crime and social issues
. 46 Comments

Michael Laws has called for ‘draconian, central measures’ to fight gangs; he wants the army called out. He wants military force let loose on our streets to engage in combat with an undefined enemy. Where are we? Iraq? That way lies dictatorship, military rule, the end of our freedom.

If we don’t want kids going into gangs and committing petty crimes that sometimes grow into more serious crime, we need to change the conditions that lead them into these lives. These kids are not born bad; they are not evil. They are ordinary human beings, and every human being has a propensity to commit anti-social or criminal acts, for some individuals it is greater than others. That can’t be changed, what can be changed is the conditions that see propensity realised.

Kids from happy homes, from ‘good suburbs’ with good urban design and quality housing, with parents in work, who get a good education, have a decent chance of a good future, and live in communities where people decent incomes rarely commit crimes. It is the poor kids from the poorly built suburbs with the bad schools and no jobs that commit crime. And, mostly, they commit them against other members of those deprived communities.

If we want to stop crime we need to change those communities. And the Labour-led governments have done an excellent job in that regard – more jobs, higher pay for low income people, more money for health and education, Working for Families, more social workers and more cops etc. But the street kids of today had their formative years during the high unemployment, high crime era of the 1990s. The conditions of the 1990s created a generation of poor kids who missed out on a decent childhood, on getting a decent education. Turning the small percentage of them who turn to crime is hard work that needs resourcing.

Making sure the next generation has a better childhood has been Labour’s paramount success, and one the Left can continue to build on. That’s the real solution to reducing the number of criminals on our streets: not creating them.