Archive for the 'helen clark' Category

Homegrown

Published
by
IrishBill
on December 26, 2008
in culture, economy, helen clark and history
. 10 Comments

At the end of my post a couple of days ago I touched on the notion of a new Zealand identity and a Left nationalism.

Since then I’ve been thinking about the value of the last government’s moves to foster national identity and their remarkable success in doing so and concluded that this is quite probably their most lasting and significant contribution to New Zealand’s political landscape.

Not that long ago there was no such thing as a national identity, I don’t have to go back more than a few decades to recall a time when the vast majority of my fellow New Zealanders would describe their identity in terms of their British heritage. Although the phrase “mother country” wasn’t used with the frequency some would suggest the concept was firmly embedded in the national psyche.

Of course this loyalty was somewhat one-sided and I recall the horror a particularly upper-middle class acquaintance of mine who upon returning to the home country was dismayed to find he was treated as a quaint colonial rather than the “proper Englishman” he considered himself to be. Britain’s signing to the EEC produced a similar shock writ large.

This little Britain mentality left scant intellectual space for any sense of a distinct political identity (either Left or Right) to develop. And why should it? Up until we were abandoned by our main market (a move that should not have engendered anything like the surprise and shock it did) we were well provided for. We had a stable class system, albeit one that dared not speak its name, and a productive sector that provided wealth and employment to the majority of New Zealanders, we were well housed and had access to good education. In short we were content and shallow.
Continue reading ‘Homegrown’

Farewell

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on November 19, 2008
in helen clark and labour
. 96 Comments

A crowd several hundred strong turned out this morning to farewell Helen Clark as she left Parliament as Prime Minister for the last time to present her Government’s official resignation to the Governor-General.

Even though I’m a Greenie, I always find Labour events amazingly heart-warming - such a huge variety of people young and old from all walks of life. And whether they’re officials, members, or supporters, they’re all just ordinary warm, good-hearted Kiwis who believe in a fairer, better New Zealand. It’s always a wonderful atmosphere amongst them. Although this was a sad occasion, there was still a strong sense of camaraderie, and of pride in a job well done.

After Clark’s car pulled away, the out-going ministers were surrounded by supporters. I was standing just beside the cameraman as this pic of Michael Cullen was taken. The woman must have asked him if he was feeling OK and, with that quick good-humoured wit that I’ve always found him to have in person, he smiled ‘well, I’ve had better months’ before bounding up the steps back to work.

So, we farewell the best government of my lifetime and one of our best ever. They and every one of their supporters can be enormously proud that their hard work has made New Zealand a better place for all.

What should Clark do?

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on November 18, 2008
in activism, helen clark and labour
. 28 Comments

There’s a lot of talk about Helen Clark leaving Parliament in a year or so to head for an international role. While Clark would obviously be more than capable of performing well at that level, I would prefer to see her do something completely different.

Labour needs to build its membership and its connections with the communities of South and West Auckland in particular. It is a disgrace that they are losing seats and party vote support in the heart of working class New Zealand. Labour needs to rebuild itself as the people’s party and build the popular demand for an improved social democracy. I would like to see Clark, MP for Mount Albert, lead that effort.

Now, some will say that if Labour has lost some connection with the working class it is the fault of Clark and her top-down leadership style. And I think there’s some truth to that. Certainly the Fifth Labour Government failed to take its opportunity to build political consciousness, public demand for improved social democracy. But she is still the person for the job of fixing that. She has the mana, she has the leadership and organisational skills. We also saw in the final days of the campaign that underneath the tough exterior, underneath the ’strong leader’ image, that Clark needed to win and keep her positions as Labour leader and PM there is still an idealist very much connected to her social democratic principles.

Such a role might not have the profile of a senior UN position but it is just as important. If Labour can build and extend its base, raise the political consciousness of the working class, our social democracy will be protected against whatever populist rubbish the Right can throw at it. Now, that would be a truly great legacy for Clark.

Fare thee well

Published
by
Dancer
on November 9, 2008
in articles, helen clark, john key and labour
. 37 Comments

Firstly I must say congratulations to the winners on the night, and sympathies to those who did not succeed. We may not hold politicians in high regard but they put themselves on the line.  The voting public have had their say and that, if nothing else, we must celebrate and respect. But for Labour the price has been high. It is the end of an era - and a time for both reflection and optimism for the future. Ian Lllewellyn said it well when he wrote:

…it was Miss Clark’s political and policy partnership with her deputy and finance minister Michael Cullen that built a legacy that is likely to stand the test of time. The introduction of Working for Families, the New Zealand Superannuation Fund (also known as the Cullen Fund), Kiwibank, KiwiSaver and the renationalisation of the rail system all stand as a complete turn around of the policies of the 1990s.

It is a testament to the Clark/Cullen administration that the only way National leader John Key could win office was by promising to keep all of those institutions in place or tinkering with them at the edges.

Clark and Cullen have been a formidable team - the challenge for Labour is to create and support the next generation. Meantime we can look to the challenges ahead for Mr Key, as summarised by Steve Braunias:

The real John Key - assuming he exists - now has to stand up. He said he was ambitious for New Zealand; New Zealand, broke and vulnerable, is ambitious for John Key. He has been granted the opportunity of a lifetime.

And we will all be watching.

Making the decision

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on November 7, 2008
in act, election 2008, greens, helen clark, john key, labour, maori party, national, progressives and united future
. 55 Comments

Have you still not decided who you’ll vote for? The final poll shows the race between a National/ACT/United Future or a Labour/Green/Progressive/Maori government is neck and neck, so your choice matters. Here is some advice and tools that may help:

When choosing who to vote for there are three things you should consider:
policy - what does the party plan to do? Is that in the best interests of you, your family, your community, and the wider world?
trust - do you believe that the party will do what it says it will?
competence - do you think the people who would govern if that party is in power are up to the job?

Change for its own sake is not a reason to vote for a party. The Government has a very important job, you want the best parties to make up that government. Vote on the issues that matter to you, not trivial things that parties often concentrate on. The biggest issues for most people are having a job, getting enough money to afford a decent standard of living, health and education. Real freedom is not light-bulbs, it is having the income security to afford the life you want for you and your family.

Since Labour came to power, unemployment has fallen to record lows, wages have risen strongly, crime is down, health and education have improved, Working for Families and tax cuts have reduced tax to nearly zero for many families, government debt has been reduced, and private saving has been encouraged with Kiwisaver. A Labour-Green government will continue to build on this record. This article describes NZ under a Labour-led government

National’s record is wages dropping and high unemployment, this time their policies are to weaken work rights. National will not be putting more money into health and education, it would increase government debt and cut Kiwisaver in half. National’s tax cuts would increase tax for many families and would only give others 1-2% more in after-tax income. This article describes NZ under a National-led government

- This test calculates how well your personal views line up with the policies of each party
- This tax cut calculator is the only one that includes money you would lose from Kiwisaver contributions under National.
- The Standard Line series of posts addresses a number of the issues that have arisen during this campaign.

Key used Nat research unit to search for smear on Clark’s husband

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on November 7, 2008
in election 2008, helen clark and john key
. 47 Comments

After weeks of griping about dirty tactics, it has been revealed in the NBR that Key ordered the tax-payer funded National Party research unit to rake over the records of Prime Minister Clark’s husband Peter Davis’s academic grants looking for a smear. Clark revealed the attempted smear in an interview on AltTV.

“In June this year when the health research council grants grants were announced my husband got a grant,” Miss Clark said, “because he’s a researcher at a university, goes back 40 years. When those grants were announced National put in an Official Information Act request demanding to see all the reviewers’ reports, really trying to get at some kind of smear that my husband got grants not because of his academic reputation but because of me.”

Suffice to say, National’s attack on Clark’s family was a fizzer

Is it appropriate for Key to order taxpayer funds to be spent trolling through the affairs of the family of another politician, especially as he has demanded that no-one look into his past?

You can watch the AltTV interview on Sky or streaming on the internet at www.alttv.co.nz at 8pm.

Clark takes round 2

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on November 3, 2008
in election 2008, helen clark and john key
. 149 Comments

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.

The Standard line: Photoshop

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on October 24, 2008
in The Standard line, election 2008, helen clark, labour, national and sexism
. 132 Comments

So, you’re talking with someone about politics and they say something really dumb and wrong and you know it’s wrong but you don’t have the arguments and facts at your fingertips to make a decisive point. That’s where our election series, The Standard line, comes in. The info you need in bite-size form. Today: photoshop

Points:
- First off, it’s so saddening that this is even a topic people are discussing. Governing is important business; too important for us to spend the campaign discussing use of photoshop instead of what the politicians would actually do if they were in government.
- Clark is not heavily photoshopped in her hoarding picture. Sure, as you would expect they’ve chosen a picture to make her look her best. She’s well made-up and the lighting is good and there have been some minor touch-ups, just as there are on Key’s images.
- If you’ve actually seen Clark in person close-up, you’ll know she projects the same radiance as is evident in the picture (see, for example, Janet’s comments on meeting Clark for the first time).
- These attacks are ony being made on Clark because she is a woman, a strong and confident one whose leadership and political skills has seen her defeat a number of conservative men.
- Like Lockwood Smith’s racist comments, Bill English’s homophobia, this sexism reveals how much National’s worldview is stuck in the past.
- It speaks volumes that National and their supporters would rather spread sexist smears than discuss serious issues

Video: Election campaign, 22 Oct

Published
by
Dancer
on October 22, 2008
in helen clark, john key and youtube
. 19 Comments

Observations of the campaign trails from TV3’s Ali Ikram….

Not sure what I think of those “bleeps” on the John Key excerpt…

Telling lies

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on October 16, 2008
in election 2008, helen clark and john key
. 9 Comments

With the wit we’ve come to expect, 08wire has Key up on his many lies during the Tuesday debate.

To my surprise, TV One didn’t bother doing fact checking even during their tedious hour-long run-down after the debate, whereas we were fact checking live on The Standard. I wish TV One would be our CNN of the South Seas but, if it ain’t going to happen, The Standard will step into the breach with live fact checking of the next two leaders’ debates as well.

Advice

Published
by
IrishBill
on October 14, 2008
in helen clark
. 63 Comments

Labour has made two serious mistakes in their campaign today. One was specifically rejecting a policy to take the minimum wage to $15 an hour and the other was tonight’s debate.

The first was an easy policy supported by every party other than National and Act that would have ensured a large chunk of people who needed a pay rise got one and would also have ensured a strong turn-out in low income pro-Labour areas like South Auckland. The feeling I got from that decision was that it was one that had been made by Cullen and was likely to have involved little consultation. If this was the case I would hope his colleagues take him to task on it because it was poor politics and they will know that.

The second was more complicated. Essentially the problem tonight was Helen. She is a very smart politician and very good on policy but she is not someone who is good at taking PR advice and over the last few years she has lost some very sharp advisers. Advisers that were willing to tell her when she was wrong.

Watching the debate I came to the conclusion that she approached it without realising how it would play out. No doubt her confidence in her own judgment would have been bolstered by her resounding success with her launch speech which was very much her own work and showed strong statesman-like vision. Exactly what was needed. On Sunday.

The problem was that come Tuesday she tried to play the same role and that was clearly the wrong horse for that course. Again as I have said in comments it was a youtube debate, with real Kiwis asking their real, jumbled, charmingly odd and downhome questions. This was never going to be the time to be statesman-like. In fact that juxtaposition clearly risked enforcing the “out of touch” image National has spent so much time and money developing for Clark.

By comparison Key was on-message, kept it downhome and used all the focus-tested lines and fabricated statistics (fabrications which may yet bite him on the arse). It wasn’t a great performance and Clark could have done better if she’d realised the rules of the game she was playing. But she didn’t.

So my advice? Helen, get yourself some good people and listen to them. They may not be as clever as you when it comes to intricate policy detail but if they’re good at what they do they’ll know how things like this will play and they’ll make sure you’re prepared. You can’t be the best at everything all at once.

Lying to win

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on October 14, 2008
in election 2008, helen clark and john key
. 64 Comments

A narrow victory for Key in tonight’s TV1/Youtube debate.

A forum where he could repeat his tired slogans to his heart’s content suited him. No-one could pull him up on his lies, except Clark who, inexplicably, failed to do so. And when Clark spoke, Key just yelled his lines over the top of her.

That might come back to bite him though. Key didn’t want to repeat Brash’s mistake of appearing to treat Clark softly because she is female. Instead, he let out the nasty side in him, yelling, talking over the top. He seemed disrespectful; “I can talk over Helen for the whole debate if you let me Mark - it’s your call”, awful. That won’t play well with women (seems Tories can’t just treat women as they do men).

Clark was, as ever, on top of all the issues raised but failed to expose the lies and emptiness of what Key, whereas he had an attack, however dishonest, for everything she said.

Key failed to lay out that legendary ambitious and positive agenda, instead he was all slogans and the usual negative lines (how many times did he say ‘decade of deficits’?). If the question was ‘who showed they have what it takes to be Prime Minister? Key failed to make the case for himself. But that’s not the question in a debate. Key just had to land as many hits on Clark as possible, and he did that.

‘Give me warning next time’, Key whimpers

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on October 13, 2008
in economy, election 2008, helen clark, john key, labour and national
. 43 Comments

While Key was blathering on about who-cares-what yesterday, Clark announced a radical and forward-looking economic stimulus package. Now, Key is having a cry over Clark not notifying him beforehand of the deposit insurance scheme. As if the Prime Minister needs to seek the approval of an opposition party before setting government policy.

Key whines that monetary policy has been bipartisan for 20 years. Not true. Both major parties accept the system set up by the Reserve Bank Act but it has never been true that modifications are agreed by them both before being implemented. It is the Government’s job to govern; the Prime Minister’s job to lead when leadership is needed.

Key is just upset because he ended up looking like a dork yesterday but that’s his own fault. He and his advisors should have known what was coming, everyone else did. Does he expect the Government to give its policy to the other side for them to announce? Sorry, that might be the National way of doing things but it’s not what responsible governments do. Next, he will want Clark’s speeches sent to him for preapproval.

Key needs to get over it and get focussed on the debates. As an avalanche of Labour policy is released over the next few weeks, National’s only hope is for him to shine going up against Clark. With National’s poll numbers sliding, Key will have to put all his media training to work or watch his hopes of adding ‘PM’ to the CV slip away.

Labour takes bull by the horns, Nats left standing

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on October 13, 2008
in economy, election 2008, helen clark, john key, labour and national
. 25 Comments

One of the first rules of politics is don’t set yourself up to be snookered; don’t position yourself in a way that your opposition can and will undercut, don’t run attack lines that your opposition can and will invalidate.

National has repeatedly done this. They ran on tax cuts as their sole platform when it was blindingly obvious that Labour would not only cut taxes but would do so in a way that benefits low-income workers leaving National’s eventual policy not only looking underwhelming but also creating situation where they are taking money off vulnerable Kiwis to give tax cuts to the wealthy. They ran an attack line that Labour has no policy or no strategy to deal with the emerging world financial crisis when they have (as any fool should assume) been working their arses off creating a serious response. Now, it is National that looks flat-footed. Their ‘economic package’ is exactly the same vague, pro-rich, tinkering as it has been for at least a year, unaltered by recent events, while Labour is proposing a genuine strategy for dealing with a long-term recession.

In my varied work-life, I’ve been a speechwriter. One of the first things a speechwriter has to keep in mind is the content must not be out of date when it is delivered - it makes your speaker look overwhelmed by events, out of the loop, naive. That’s exactly how Key and English looked yesterday as they lambasted Labour for having no strategy for dealing with the crisis while offering none themselves even as, a few blocks away, Clark was detailing a program of infrastructure construction, labour up-skilling, and idle capacity utilisation akin to the policies that got the world out of the Great Depression*.

It is Labour that has shown it understands the situation we face, that the outlook for the world economy has altered dramatically over the last few weeks. It is Labour that has shown has both the will and the tools to deal with it. It is National that is out of touch and bereft of ideas.

*(it is these policies, not the deposit insurance, a confidence-building exercise than anything, that will make the real difference, more on that later)

Tories still bigots at heart

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on October 12, 2008
in bill english, election 2008, helen clark, national, same old national and sexism
. 47 Comments

When I saw this guy using the guise of a Youtube debate question to attack Clark on her appearance, I felt sorry for the little jerk - what a pathetic life he must lead.

When I saw Bill ‘do what it takes to win’ English do the same thing (at 1.30), while an audience of old, fat, white men laughed, my stomach turned.

Same old chauvinist National; same old sexist pigs. No wonder there’s rumours going round of a ‘racist secret tape’. The true face of National hasn’t changed. It’s still the same born-to-rule rich boys and their bigoted worldview.

I would challenge Key to rein in his filthy henchmen but it’s clear he has neither the will nor the authority to control them.

For the record, I think Clark looks great at 58, she’s fit and trim, and hasn’t been aged by the pressures of leading in the way others have. But that’s irrelevant. The only reason, the only reason, the Tories attack her for not being a former beauty queen is that she’s a woman - a smart, powerful, confident one at that - and that scares them.

Expect the unexpected

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on September 28, 2008
in election 2008, helen clark and john key
. 44 Comments

I’m probably going to be at odds with my fellow Standardistas in this but I support having debates featuring just Clark and Key. One of these two people will lead the country after the election and we deserve to see to them in a forum where they go head to head against each other, rather than only appearing in debates where they are just two of eight voices (that said, they should also appear in the broader leaders’ debates).

I think it’s interesting that Key is keen to have these three head-to-head debates. Wise old voices had been saying that Key would shy away from debates, particularly head-to-heads, because he wouldn’t be able to foot it with Clark. But that’s wrong. National is spending a huge amount on media training for Key. Even when caught by surprise, he is noticeably better than the blathering fool that was once ‘Key unspun’. He has become much better at delivering his pat answers in a convincing manner. He doesn’t look horribly out of his depth as he used to. Watch for Key to disappear for days at a time in the run up to the debates as the media training intensifies.

National’s calculation is that Key doesn’t have to best Clark; he just has to beat low expectations of his own performance. They will be putting a lot of stock in a positive outcome from the debates to give them momentum, which they are lacking at the moment and which the their tax package is unlikely to deliver (seeing as it will either be embarrassingly small or will come at the cost of higher debt or large spending cuts). In other words, expect Key to do much better in the debates than you would expect. National wouldn’t have agreed the head-to-head option if they didn’t expect him to do well. 

Peters stands down

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on August 29, 2008
in election 2008, election funding, helen clark and nz first
. 145 Comments

Peters has stood down. Clark has taken over his portfolios.

It’s good that Peters appears to have accepted that this is a necessity and hasn’t turned on the Government. Clever of Clark to take the portfolios herself too.

[we nearly had the scoop on this too but it took too long for me to get an internet connection, damn Herald got in ten minutes earlier]

PM loses a mate

Published
by
Tillerman
on August 15, 2008
in helen clark and labour
. 55 Comments

The death at just 59 of alpine legend Gottlieb Braun-Elwert will be greatly mourned around the Tekapo community, and much further afield too. Braun-Elwert was one of those Europeans who came here and found our great outdoors intoxicating. He arrived in his 20s on a hitch-hiking tour, fell in love with the country’s natural splendour, and so made New Zealand his home. Some years ago Helen Clark was a client of his very successful alpine adventure company, and the two developed a close friendship. Clark’s love of the great Kiwi outdoors saw her head south annually, to ski and climb in Braun-Elwert’s alpine “backyard”. The locals certainly appreciated her frequent visits and support of a local venture. A family friend told TVNZ News today that Elwert-Braun and Clark shared a love of the outdoors, and had similar interests and principles. The efforts of the PM and her companions in trying to save the mountain guide’s life yesterday are being strongly appreciated. Tekapo Police have paid tribute to the extremely good job the stricken party did, and a Search and Rescue spokesman said the experience had shown the PM to be a “remarkable woman”. Despite what her jaundiced critics say, Clark has long demonstrated a commitment to this country and what it has to offer. Her regular visits to the Tekapo backcountry, and other wilderness areas, underline that.

Nasty

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on July 10, 2008
in helen clark and john key
. 58 Comments

On Tuesday, Helen Clark was asked what she thought of the fact that both John Key and Bill English have been unavailable for comment when the media have had questions about National policy this week (not being available for comment is a Crosby/Textor tactic for shutting down stories). Clark, who is renowned for the hours she puts into her job, remarked that it appears they put fewer hours into the job than Labour Ministers do. The comments weren’t publicly reported.

So far, so what. But Key’s advisors got hold of the footage somehow and saw an opportunity for a nasty attack.

Yesterday, Key, back from his holiday at his Omaha beach house, was on the TV saying ‘look, I’m a family man, I was spending time with my family, personal attack etc etc’. Of course, as Duncan Garner pointed out, Clark had made no mention of Key’s family. Garner said it was just an attempt to paint Key as the victim of personal attacks.

But there’s another subtext here: Key managed to mention his family four times in twenty seconds, why do that when Clark hadn’t mentioned families? Simple, the counter-point to Clark. Ever since Clark rose to promenience in politics, National and its allies have been attacking her for being a woman who doesn’t have children. Key’s comments were designed to attack in this mysogynist fashion once again.

It’s nasty, nasty stuff and I honestly believed National had grown past that. Turns out you can never expect too little from the Tories.

Did Clark endorse push-polling?

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on July 3, 2008
in helen clark and polls
. 18 Comments

Some of the more excitable righties on the blogosphere and John Key have taken a throw-away comment in Audrey Young’s blog to mean that Helen Clark said Labour will be doing push-polling. Here’s what was actually said, according to Young’s recording:

Reporter: Will Labour use push-polling with ‘the truth?’
Clark: Well I’m not sure how you can ‘push’ with the truth. You can say to people that your policy is X or that somebody else’s policy is X and ask for an opinion on that. But it is important that what you are saying is someone’s policy actually is the policy. I think it is important to be honest about it.’

So, Clark says polling regarding people’s opinions on the real policies of parties is legitimate (note, not Labour will do it). Is that endorsing push-polling?

Push polling is “a form of telemarketing-based propaganda and rumor mongering, masquerading as a poll”. Famous examples include the Bush push-poll against McCain in 2000 “Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for President if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?” and the Crosby/Textor push poll against Sue Robinson “Would you be more or less likely to vote for Robinson if they knew she had publicly supported abortion up to the ninth month of pregnancy”. Both the questions did not relate to actual facts but were designed to instil belief those facts were real in the minds of voters.

The essence of push-polling is dishonesty. Clark is saying  polling to establish public views of real policies is legitimate, there’s no dishonesty there and so no push-polling.