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Archive for the 'election 2008' Category
Unemployment has risen to 4.2%, the first time in four years it has topped 4%.
That’s lower than the experts expected, they thought the rate would blow out to 4.5% or more. But that’s the power of a full employment policy. Because we’ve had such low unemployment for so long, employers are reluctant to lay off staff or cut wages during a lean period. The greatest achievement of the Labour-led governments to date has been getting unemployment down.
We also have to understand what ‘unemployment is 4.2% means’. It means that of the adults who say they are in work or looking for work, 4.2% don’t have work. So, there’s another variable at play, not just the number of jobs but how many adults are participating in the work-force. Because labour-force participation changes, it is possible for employment and unemployment to grow at the same time if labour-force participation grows. That’s what happened last quarter. Labour-force participation rose from 68.6% to 68.7%. The number of employed people rose 2,000 (0.1%) to 2,172,000 while the number of unemployed rose 6,000 (6.3%) to 94,000. There are 22,000 more jobs now than there were last year.
The problem is that our economy is no longer adding jobs fast enough to get all new members of the workforce into work. That’s a bad thing but at least our economy is not yet shedding jobs.
That’s unlikely to continue to be the case. The mess the financiers have made of the global economy will create damage here, and there will come a time when the number of jobs starts to fall. And that’s why it’s good to see Labour and its allies focussing on policies to create more worthwhile jobs. As Clark said last night, their economic stimulus package is about “jobs, jobs, jobs”.
Via frogblog, the Greens’ closing campaign broadcast. I’d put Labour’s up too, but I can’t find it.
Yesterday, John Key was telling journalists that he knew the secret agenda taper, Kees Keizer, was a Labour Party activist. In fact, he knew that wasn’t true, which is why he refused to name him.
The Herald has. And what it’s also reveled is a close relationship between Cameron Slater and the National Party research unit:
Mr Slater said he worked with the taxpayer-funded National Party research unit at identifying the spy by going through the Facebook sites of Young Labour members.
This is the same Cameron Slater who has:
Stalked John Minto and published a photo of his house
Alleged a Labour party candidate was a sexual pervert
Photoshopped the face of a 15 year old labour activist onto gay porn
There have been rumours that Slater has been feeding smears onto the internet on behalf of the National Party and has worked with their research unit to seed other information on their behalf. Now it looks increasingly likely this is true.
When John Key was asked about the tapes on last night’s news he talked about pigs in muck. It seems his team has been working with one of the biggest pigs of all.
The secret taper has revealed himself as Kees Keizer, a leftie from Wellington. I spent quite a bit of time yesterday encouraging Keizer to tell his story, preferably to The Standard or the Herald (more credible), and he steadfastly refused. So imagine my surprise when I see a three page article of him talking to the Herald’s Patrick Gower.
It’s a facsinating read. Keizer says he just walked in, went up to people and started talking. He gave his real name and said he was interested in joining the Young Nats. And they talked back. Kees says he was ‘appalled’ by how readily the Nats talked about their secret plans when among what they assumed were friends. He says that all it took for English to start spouting off about Obama and the EU was for him to mention his interest in European politics. And we can hear on the first tape that English is basically just talking freely when he unfolds National’s view of the ‘punters’, ‘Labour plus voters’, his view of Key, and National’s plans for Working for Families and Kiwibank.
Now, I know Kees. Which is hardly surprising. We both studied international relations in similar areas (myself democratisation, he conflict resolution), we are both into environmental politics, we both went on cycle trips last year (myself through Europe and he through Europe and North Africa) and we exchanged comments on each others travel blogs. We get along well. I wouldn’t say we’re best buddies though. Frankly, as the face of The Standard, I’ve met just about every leftie in town. If National had identified someone else in leftwing activist circles from Wellington as the taper, then they probably could have found some link between me and that person as well. It would be more surprising if I’d never heard of Kees. Unfortunately, for the conspiracy theorists on the Right, I knew nothing of the fact that he’s the taper.
I have no trouble in believing Keizer acted alone. My impression of him is he’s that kind of character: a self-starter and one for coming up with unusual ideas. This is a man, after all, who cycled North Africa, up through Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon by himself introducing himself to various government ministers, militants, and ordinary people along the way. I don’t know who he talked to about the tapes, he says he ‘took advice’ from some people but I seriously doubt it was the Labour Party. His interest is international relations and he’s well to the Left of Labour on that. Times I’ve spoken to him he has been critical of Labour sending troops to Afghanistan and when I’ve taken slightly realist positions on conflicts he has accused me of being too like Labour.
It’s interesting to see Cameron Slater admitting that he and David Farrar work closely with the tax-payer funded National Party research unit to dig dirt on people. It’s also interesting to learn that National has known Keizer is the taper for some time, probably a couple of months since the Electoral Commission finding on Keizer’s EFA regarding the Employer and Manufacturers’ Association ads. That would fit with Key repeatedly saying they knew the identity of the taper but not revealing the name. Why didn’t they? Because they knew Keizer has nothing to do with Labour. Yet, despite that knowledge, they continued to claim Labour was behind the affair. That is disgraceful. Key has repeatedly lied to the media on this issue.
Matthew Hooton has constructed a bizarro world where a grab-bag of people who have been to Drinking Liberally is somehow behind the tapes. Maybe, Hooton should come along to a Drinking Liberally event to get a firmer grasp on reality. Drinking Liberally is not some secretive set, it’s just an organisation that gets speakers along to have a talk and gives lefties a chance to meet each other. Anyone can come along and everyone does. A typical Drinking Liberally Wellington event draws a hundred people. So it’s not surprising that Hooton can look at the pics of the events and the hundreds of members of the DL Facebook group and identify a dozen people (here’s a tip, secret groups don’t have Facebook groups); just about every left-wing activist in Wellington has been along to at least one event. It’s as if I took a whole bunch of pics from St John’s bar, identified the names of a few people in a few of the pics, and concluded there was a great conspiracy between young Tory wannabes in ill-fitting suits and stockmarket wankers.
I have to say, I think Keizer has done very well. He pulled off an audacious piece of work exposing National’s secret agenda (that audacity alone was enough to convince me there was no Labour Party involvement - you’ve never met a group of people more paralysed by fear of something going wrong). Thanks to him, there can be no doubt that National is telling the pubic one thing, while planning something else in private. On that score, isn’t Key’s response when asked whether he is worried there is a tape of him enlightening? Clark would just say ‘I’m not worried because what I say in private is what I say in public’. Whereas Key, dissembles, ums and ahs, and says ‘you would have to look at the context’. What has Key been saying behind closed doors? Perhaps we’ll find out shortly. What we do know is that whatever Keizer recorded can only be the tip of the iceberg. He was one guy at one National cocktail event. Who knows what else, what worse things, they talk about when there’s no-one to expose them?
Keizer has also explained his actions very well in the Herald piece, keeping the focus where it belongs, on the politicans and their secret agendas. If I were to give him one piece of advice it would be to release the full conversations to Duncan Garner so he can be confident that they haven’t been doctored (Keizer insists he just removed his own voice from the recordings). If I have one criticism of the Herald article it is that Gower calls The Standard ‘Labour-affiliated’ when just yesterday I was having a moan to him about how, as a Green Party member, I get sick of my work being constantly attributed to the Red Tories.
Basically, good on you Kees, you’ve done this country an invaluable service. No political party should be allowed to hide a secret agenda. I suspect that I’m not alone in saying I’ll buy you a beer next time I see you.
Yesterday morning on Sunrise, John Key was moaning that there is no context to the latest secret agenda tape, where Bill English praises the war in Iraq and criticises Bill English’s ‘moralistic’ approach to international relations. Key is right, context helps us undestand information better. Luckily, Scoop’s library keeps every media release, so we can see what English was saying as leader of the Nats as the time of the invasion:
“The National Party strongly supports New Zealand’s traditional friends and allies, and like them it’s committed to regime change in Baghdad”
Luckily too, Labour08 has audio of Key speaking on Iraq in the House, from which Greeenwoman has produced a youtube video that put Key’s rant into its proper context:
For a final piece of context, here is Phil Goff, an experienced minister of foreign, defence, and trade, presenting a more, um, measured view of international relations
From Both Eyes Open:
National Party candidate Stephen Franks’ campaign team has been systematically tearing down political posters put up by his opponents – despite Franks recently describing people defacing his election hoardings as “political thugs who don’t like free speech or opinions different from their own”.
The group Both Eyes Open – which has been distributing posters, banners and stickers around the country reminding the public of the National Party’s record – discovered that its posters were being removed every night throughout central Wellington. “Our members went out last night and this morning and discovered it was Stephen Franks’ campaign people tearing them down,” spokesperson Fergus Wheeler said. Photos of these people match photos of the campaign people who have been out holding banners and leafletting with Stephen Franks around the city.
“It seems a little hypocritical of Mr Franks to grandstand about freedom of speech for his own campaign advertisements and then let his team destroy other people’s ones,” Mr Wheeler said.
The posters they have been removing include one about Stephen Franks’ anti-human rights actions three years ago when he was an ACT MP. The “Don’t vote for prejudice” poster quotes his amendment to human rights legislation where he tried to make it lawful for employers and landlords to discriminate against people for being in an unmarried couple, for being gay, for “extra-marital child bearing” and for breaching “promises made in marriage”.
Just this morning we watched his campaign team removing these posters, and two others saying “Do you really want a SUB-PRIME MINISTER?” and “Privatised health, School fees up, Benefit Cuts, Toll roads — National, not the change we need.” In other words, we have been having a legitimate say about the issues that we believe are important in this election. This is exactly the freedom of speech that two weeks ago Stephen Franks was self-righteously defending.”
Our members spoke to Stephen Franks in the street this morning and he confirmed that his crew had been removing posters. He claimed that the “Don’t vote for prejudice” posters were defamatory but did not explain why this gave his a right to remove them. “As a lawyer, he knows the defamation is decided in court, not by removing other people’s freedom of speech,” Mr Wheeler said. “They’re not defamatory, we’re just reminding people of Mr Franks’ past actions which he would prefer liberal Wellington Central voters to forget.”
The pics are here
As I’ve written before, I can’t understand the mentality of someone who would go to the kind of effort necessary to tear down someone else’s posters. If you believe in democracy, the competition of ideas, put up your own posters.
I know, they’re inaccurate and out of date. And it’s only three days until the only poll that counts. But I’m curious!
It’s now been ten days since the last public poll, which strikes me as a bizarre gap at the high of the electoral campaign. I guess they’re all saving up their final poll until Friday. Apart from denying us the fun of knowing which way the momentum is going, this silence does have more material effects. If Labour or the Greens’ numbers are still rising, having polls showing that could further invigorate their campaigns. If people are turning off Key polls might help swing others. Potential New Zealand First voters are probably those with the most interest in seeing a number of polls; they need to know whether a vote for NZF would be wasted (as I suspect it would be) and whether they’re better off voting for their second preference.
Both sides’ internal polls are said to be good news for the Left - a Labour, Greens, Progressive, Maori Party government looks like the most viable outcome at the moment. Hence, Key’s continued whining directed at the Maori Party that they have to let him govern if National is the top polling party.
One of the virtues of New Zealand government has long been that we avoid US-style pork barrel politics. The Government sets the direction of policy and priorities but doesn’t interfere with specific projects. The principle is that the experts, not the elected officials, should decide the details of specific projects. For instance, the Government might decide it wants more investment in roads or roads in a particular region, but it is the independent New Zealand Transport Agency that decides on which project to construct, in which order, and with which details in order to meet the Government’s objectives. No ‘bridge to nowhere’ for us.
Not only is is just a plain good idea to have the experts making the decisions, it also removes an avenue for political corruption.
So, it is very worrying to see National making pork-barrel promises. The Nats are going around promising specific road projects will be built, meaning they may have to override the NZTA. They are even editing the details of these projects - adding a tunnel to one. I think we can all agree that its better to have engineers, not politicians, deciding if a tunnel is needed on a road project.
The promise to fund Plunketline means overriding the transparent and independent contracting process by which Plunket and other organisations compete for funding. I always thought the Tories were against the Government choosing winners but, more seriously, when the politicians decide which charities get the limited pool of money it is an invitation to cronyism and corruption.
This disturbing willingness to over-ride independent bodies and experts for petty political gain doesn’t end at roads. National is promising to fund 52 weeks treatment of the breast cancer drug Herceptin, which is currently funded for nine weeks. In doing so, they would have to change the legislation that makes PHARMAC independent and ignore the medical experts. PHARMAC said that is they were given the $40 million it would take to fund Herceptin they would use it fund other drugs, which would be able to deliver greater health benefits to more people at the same cost. Given limited resources, PHARMAC wants to get the best bang for the public buck. National would override that decision because Herceptin is a good populist issue (as you would expect, breast cancer has a lobby group that sufferers of other conditions can’t match).
National sees votes and, so, is willing to sacrifice quality and independent decision-making in the use of public money. That would lead to bad decisions being made and more wasteful government spending. It is something people on all sides should oppose.
Ahead of the final leaders’ debate tonight, 08wire has produced a video on John Key’s lies in the second debate.
What strikes me about these lies is how they are, for the most part, of the ‘New Zealand sucks’ ilk and that they are quite petty. I guess telling lots of smaller lies lessens the likelihood that the media will call Key to account, as they might with larger lies, but it also means he makes himself a liar over small beer. Not something most people would sacrifice their integrity for.
Expect him to repeat the same lies tonight. As with the previous two debates, there will be live fact checking on The Standard.
More from 3News tonight on the secret recordings taken at the Naitonal Party conference in August. This time it’s Bill English expressing concern over Barack Obama’s “moralistic” stance to international relations:
I’m a bit worried about this whole Obama and Europe thing, just because there’s a limited effectiveness in being moralistic about international relations… and the US you can argue over do it - Bush should have put a different window dressing on it but there still needs to be someone willing to pull the trigger.
Rather than address the substance of his own deputy’s comments Key is outrageously spinning this as “another dirty trick from Labour”. English won’t front either, using the same line as Key.
It’s great to see people still downloading materials from the Campaign Hub. With just over three days of campaigning to go, you’re running out of time to communicate the issues you care about and make sure people vote Left. So, be sure to take the opportunity.
On the same note, Both Eyes Open has released their final leaflets.
Download them here
There’s also a crossword. You can play it online here, it’s good fun. It can be emailed or printed off here.
The Herald campaign updates reports that Clark has just had a private interview with TV3, appearently getting her response to the latest secret agenda tape. Guess that means it will be on TV3 tonight.
According to the Herald, a reporter at the conference asked the PM if she thinks the public is sick of having National’s secret agenda revealed by these tapes. Clark, reasonably enough, responded “I have no idea but obviously it is attracting your interest.”
[update: I didn't get it word for word but the tape was of Bill English saying he was worried about Obama, didn't like his moralistic apporach to foreign relations, thought the war in Iraq was a good idea. Said Bush should have put a different window dressing on it but you have to have someone who's ready to pull the trigger. I'll do some analysis later if none of the others have, it's beer o'clock]
Part 3 in the CTU’s series of election vids. The best yet
You can see the other two here
The latest government accounts show the economy is in better condition than was expected. Tax take was $500 million higher than expected due to higher-than-expected income tax revenue. That means more money was being earned from wages and salaries than Treasury had forecast; in other words, unemployment is not rising as fast as Treasury had expected. The other effect of employment holding up better than was expected is that government spending on benefits was lower than forecast. Company profits are down, perhaps due to losses on the international markets and the sharp drop in the exchange rate. GST is in line with expectations, so domestic spending is doing OK. All in all, really good news and indicates, as Don Brash says, we are in the best possible condition to weather the international financial crisis.
That crisis has hit the Government’s financial investments. They are worth $1.8 billion less than was expected before the meltdown hit. Markets will go up and down, so the Operating Balance Excluding Gains and Losses (OBEGAL) just looks at the balance between revenue and spending. As Treasury says “By excluding gains and losses the OBEGAL gives a more direct indication of the underlying stewardship of the Government than the operating balance”. That was a $900 million surplus in the three months to September, $500 million more than expected.
Since the end of that quarter, the Government has introduced tax cuts and new spending which will lower the surplus. The new financial statements don’t update Treasury’s forecasts for coming years but, with employment apparently holding up better than they thought, it is likely the deficits in coming years will be smaller than projected.
Gross government debt is a little higher than expected at 17.8% of GDP (vs 17.2% forecast) but the net financial position was right on forecast - net assets of 5.7% of GDP.
So, as good news as there could be given the international situation. There was nothing that could be done to avoid losses for our financial interests when the world markets went into free-fall and company profits have also been hit but the real economy and, most importantly, jobs and wages are doing better than expected.
[as a side note, Treasury has consistently under-forecast employment and over-forecast unemployment for years; ever since unemployment went under 4% four years ago, they've been saying it would soon be back above 4%. I wonder if their model fails to account for the self-reinforcing effect of full employment.]
We’ve just received these. The first is from Hollowman productions, who brought us the famous Porirua markets video.
The second is a video a reader took when he was stopped by a plain-clothes cop after asking a leftwing question to John Key at a campaign event.
The question he asked is here
Because the polls are showing a Labour, Greens, Progressives, Maori alliance could govern, National is crying that the largest party has some kind of ‘moral mandate’ to govern. Much as the cricket team which has the highest individual run scorer has the moral mandate to win the game, I guess. Back in the real world, though, it is common for governments in countries that use proportional representation to not include the largest party.
In the last 12 elections in the Netherlands, 3 have not included the largest party (the left-wing Workers’ Party)
The Social Democrats are the largest party in the Swedish Parliament but the right-wing Alliance for Sweden, led by the Moderate Party, governs. This was such an unexceptional event in Sweden that the Moderates and their allies declared victory within three hours of the results coming in and the leader of the Social Democrats resigned at the same time with nary a whimper about moral mandates.
In Germany, right-wing coalitions governed despite the Social Democrats being the largest party in 1949, 1965, 1982, 1983, 1987, and 1994.
In Austria in 2002, the major right-wing party won the most votes but the Social Democrats governed with the far-right party.
I could go on, but the point is this: the will of the people is what matters in a democracy and when the people have voted for a bloc of parties that can work together and command the confidence of Parliament that bloc is the legitimate government. National would have no moral mandate to govern when a majority of people had voted for parties that oppose, or are expected to oppose, National.
A much better performance from Clark saw her best Key in tonight’s debate.
As well as being on top of all the issues, as always, she took the fight to Key, calling him up on his lies. After not doing as well as she had expected in the first debate, Clark had adapted.
Key was weak and, enitrely predictably, he stuck to the same forumla that had won him through last time (interrupting Clark, keeping it vague, and running those same old lies). He even looked scared when Campbell asked him about National’s old neo-liberals on the front-bench. He looked very bad when he made a personal attack on Cullen. He started reasonably strongly but seemed actually physically tired by the end.
Clark was visionary at moments too. The defining moment of the debate was when the leaders were asked about freedom. Clark said her purpose in politics is to create more freedom for people - through better education, better health, more jobs, and higher wages. That’s what real freedom in the social democratic ideal is about, freeing people from the constraints of the class they are born into in a capitalist system. Key’s response on freedom was ‘lightbulbs, they’re taking away our lightbulbs’. It made him look petty and small-minded.
At that point, we had the measure of them both. We saw that Clark’s politics arises from deep, principled conviction. We saw that Key is about jumping on the latest populist bandwagon.
Watching the TV3 debate and it seems they’re running another text poll. It’s too early yet to tell who’s going to win, but what’s the bet the text poll favours the party whose voters are wealthy enough to:
a) be at home on a weekday evening,
b) own a cellphone, and
c) be in a position to piss away money on a phone poll?
I’d wager $20 the text poll will go to National regardless of the outcome of the debate.
If you haven’t seen Pundit’s New Zealand election quiz you should head on over and take a look. It’s based on the award-winning US version and provides a pretty quick and accurate measure on how your views line up with each parliamentary party.
I got Greens 84, Prog 77, Labour 74, NZ First 62, United Future 57, National 26 and ACT 17, which apart from NZF and United being a bit too high seems pretty accurate. For some reason the Maori Party didn’t show up, but I’m assured it’s in there somewhere.
It’s worth passing onto friends and family too - I find that when the debate shifts from Helen’s teeth and onto policy most people are surprised to discover they don’t have much in common with John Key after all.
You can take the quiz here.
