Author Archives: E.A.

It’s not a Housing Crisis it’s a Housing Hernia: And both John Key and Andrew Little have one!

Posted on by
8

Yes I am flogging this dead horse again except that its an all new flog, we are flogging a different part of the horse and the horse might just not be dead yet!

Well it had to happen and last week it did, the first difference of opinion between Labour and the Greens happened since their cosy little MOU in May. And what was the disagreement over? Not surprisingly it was housing!

But we are not calling it a housing crisis anymore, that term is too controversial, too running down the road with your head on fire, so instead we are now calling it the Housing Hernia.

I had a hernia once. I got it after five hours shaking my behind on a sweaty dance floor and then walking, dripping in sweat, out into the chill of a Singaporean pre-dawn. It was not a smart move. First I got a hacking cough, then it got worse, finally it got nasty. The cough became painful, very painful every time I sneezed, which was a lot. I had contracted tropical pneumonia.

Overnight I was transformed into a low budget Michael Jackson impersonator by the fact that every time I sneezed I grabbed my crotch and screamed. This entertained my friends and co-workers no end at first but since I couldn’t do the dance moves or sing Billie Jean it soon became tiresome.

Sensing a serious problem I made haste to my local Singaporean doctor, a hardworking gentleman who served the massive HDB (Housing Development Board) block next to where I lived. He was quick, he was efficient and after hearing my plight and testing for himself by pressing the affected area (eliciting a strangled scream from me) he pronounced me the proud father of a hernia.

“A hernia, you mean like what rugby players get?” I asked (forgetting that Singaporeans don’t play rugby and my own experiences of who might get a hernia was severely limited). “Yes” he said in that voice doctors have for patients who ask stupid questions. “So what do I do?” I asked. The doctor looked at me and said “you can have surgery to treat it or leave it as it is and risk a rupture” in the same way a waiter might give the options for desert (lemon tart or chocolate cake? The correct answer is cake!). Needless to say I chose surgery!

So off I went to see the specialist, who has two plastic gold lions outside his office (a common sight outside offices in Singapore) which denoted the wealth and taste of the occupant inside. Thankfully he was a skilled doctor and thanks to the magic of health insurance (the only expats in Singapore without it are the stupid ones) I was booked in and ready to have the little bugger removed.

I won’t bore you with the gory details but suffice it to say the operating room looked like an extremely clean, white tiled, mechanics bay (complete with a rack of shiny, stainless steel tools which looked like they could pull the wheel nuts off a F1 racer in 2.6 seconds) AND that the anesthetist was late because, and I swear I am not making this up, he was playing golf!

So I lay on the wheeled stretcher, listening to the heart monitor, attached to my thumb, beeping and made a game of trying to slow my heart rate down, which correspondingly made the beeping decrease but every time I looked at the “tool rack” on the wall the beeping suddenly shot back up.

Finally all and sundry were present, I was given a shot in the arm, and asked to count to 10. I made it to five.

When I woke up I was on a stretcher in the hall and there was a pain where the hernia had been residing along with a big bandage. I hobbled out of the hospital, helped by my wife, into a taxi and home to recover.

It took a week of walking round painfully but after that the pain was gone, I had a scar to show where the doctor had cut me open and put in a plastic mesh over the hernia (which prevented it from popping out/rupturing) and its never bothered me since despite continuing to do martial arts and all manner of things which might have “ruptured” me, had I not done something about it.

Now the point of this story is to illustrate that “hernia” is a much better term to describe the housing situation in New Zealand (with its slow building (pun intended) series of issues which lead to said hernia); that the process of dealing with the wee beastie at no point required me to behave as if my head was on fire and that if left unchecked will most likely lead to a “rupture”.

In New Zealand the housing hernia is at what we might call the “Michael Jackson” stage of the process with sudden painful outbursts before all, temporarily, returns to “normal” and the growing realization that something is seriously wrong.

In deciding what to do with it appears that the Greens, or perhaps just Metiria Turei in an unscripted outburst, have opted for surgery in the form of cutting house prices to around $350, 000, while Labour, justifiably upset at being caught on the hoof by the statement but still in denial about the issue, have decided to continue with pretending that they might have a chance at appearing on Stars in Their Eyes (fat chance once you see this guy).

But as Jo Moir points out in the media, the split between the two parties clearly reflects each’s voter/generational differences with the Greens supported more by younger renters and Labour by older home owners. Of course such splits are not total but it does seem to reflect the basic demographics of the situation.

And she is not the only one to pick up on this, as media commentator Johnny Moore, found out recently when he wrote a piece attacking (at least partially in jest) the NZ Baby Boomers for making their own lives comfortable at the expense of future generations.

The response was predictable and somewhat correct in that he was eviscerated for creating a generational generalization which while overly broad in its sweep by blaming the Me Generation, also missed the fact that it’s not just boomers who are buying up houses in Godzone or that the problem is also due to political inaction by successive governments. None the less he got the parameters of the problem right.

But the best articulation of the hernia goes to Pencilsword with his masterful cartoon which is the most succinct articulation of the divide growing in NZ, I highly recommend his work.

And gap is what the issue is and if the numbers in Pencilsword’s cartoon are even remotely correct then we have the making of a generational split in NZ that may never be bridged unless something very drastic is done, like reducing house prices to an average of $350,000.

Because, as he so cleverly puts it, if you don’t own a home you have to rent and rents go up at the same market rates as house prices go up (so their owners can service their massive mortgages) yet wages ARE NOT going up or keeping pace with the rapid rise of house prices so if you rent your ability to pay rent is reduced until you either have to move to somewhere cheaper (say a garage, a car or Australia) or you get a nice large pay rise like MPs get (because we all get those don’t we?).

And this is why, despite the not adhering to the terms of the MOU by just letting fly to the media without warning Labour in advance, the Greens (or just Metiria Turei) have thrown the problem into sharp light by proposing a solution which while painful is probably necessary to prevent the likely rupture if NZ keeps on ignoring the problem and then shrieking and reeling in pain every time the housing market painfully shoots up another $3000.

For the homeowners in NZ (some of whom are Me Generation boomers) they just want this issue to go away, and the media for a long while has been compliant (possibly because they are also of said generation) by not bringing it up.

But for the renters (some of whom are Generation X (like myself) and Y’s) the problem is not going to go away, it’s getting more and more painful as rent gobbles more and more of ones pay packet at the expense of everything else and nary without a decent pay rise on the horizon (unless you move to Australia).

I note that in Christchurch where I live, rents have recently stabilized by new housing coming on stream but rents are still high and those that I know who own more than one home have reported grumbling by tenants at the high rents to the point of even asking for a reduction.

So the schizophrenic standoff continues with John Key and National, and now Andrew Little and Labour, in denial while bedazzling their white socks and glove while the upsetting, and painful solution is being discussed by the Greens (who knows what Winston thinks of this matter?).

And again the hernia analogy works here, yes getting the problem fixed before the rupture occurs, by correcting market prices, is going to hurt for some people, but there are ways to bring things down without setting ones hair on fire and the result if left is very very obvious because ALL bubbles burst/overheated markets correct in time and when house prices are jumping at $3000 a week I think we can all agree that the market is booming but it’s not going to last.

The beggar at this banquet of home ownership is anyone who can’t afford the massive sums, let alone the deposit, for a house in one of New Zealand’s major cities or towns and who is going to get continually squeezed by rising rents until something has to give.

And the rupture, if/when, it comes will be broadly along generational lines, as declining levels of home ownership do mostly align with the ages of people, resulting in a generational explosion of non-home ownership, frustration and rage at being denied a shot at the Kiwi Dream (the Quarter Acre Pavalova Paradise) and political behaviors which while not Trumpian in their levels could lead to something/someone in office for which they will be later blamed for (ironically) while the true guilty parties will have either passed on or be living comfortably retired in their mortgage free homes.

Of course the simple argument is that Labour (and the Greens) are just representing their respective electorates and that Andrew Little can’t afford to take any action which might leave the Labour faithful with a house worth less than their mortgage but if that’s the case then Andrew Little better get used to Labours current polling because they will have to squabble with the ever popular John Key and National for the declining share of voters who have their own home while the Greens and NZ First continue to gain as they speak for the increasing numbers of those who can’t make the mortgage nut.

So if this little split between Labour and the Greens is real then its more than just the Honeymoon being over, kiss goodbye the champagne and lingerie for good as this difference is unlikely to go away with just some whispered sweet nothings and a box of chocolates. To heal this divide is going to require one party or the other to give some serious ground and there is no indication that either side will be doing that. So as Moir notes someone will be “sleeping on the couch for the foreseeable future”.

But if this is politics, policy or pragmatism it’s rapidly becoming irrelevant and the housing hernia will continue to cause pain in New Zealand until the market “ruptures” or pigs need clearance to land at airports.

Finally I add this little bit of piece of gossip as it came to me from two unrelated sources and while probably in the realm of speculative fiction is not beyond the pale of possibility.

Said rumor being that the reason why National is thinking about an early election next year (July 2017 instead of November 2017) is because they know the market is going to crash soon and want to be out of power so that Labour gets the blame much like Obama got blamed for GFC which was happily brewed up while GW was on watch (but who is going to let facts get in the way of a good ol session of political point scoring).

I am not quite sold on this, yet, as it requires National to have foreknowledge of the coming crash and be willing to give up all the perks of being in government for the minor political points accrued from Nyah Nyahing Labor while it struggles with the housing hernia blowing an O-ring and writhing around in pain like its head is on fire.

But what could change my mind about this is if our ever smiling PM was to be considering dropping out of politics for whatever reason as then Nationals chances of making a fourth term are slim to zero as none of the haggard, bloated visages in cabinet  is going to have the same mojo as Key when it comes to leading the party, winning over the populace or avoiding the deluge of knives aimed at their back.

In such a situation then I would fully expect National to cut their losses by running through as much of their political program as possible between now and polling day before taking the hit and leaving Labour with the inevitable mess and them free to play the blame game.

John Key made his money as a market speculator and the housing market has all the hallmarks of a speculators market (rising bubble prices, external third parties, owning more than one house etc) so if anyone in cabinet has an inkling of what’s coming it will be him and its clear he wants to leave a legacy (see the flag debacle) so all the more better to get out before the proverbial explodes all over the fan and leaves whoever is in government with a mess than won’t wash out. He can then at least claim it was Andrew Little’s fault and criticize government inaction from the opposition benches.

There is a reason why NZ got state housing in the 30s and it was due to similar circumstances like we are getting today (low home ownership and predatory landlords) so there is a historical precedent for dealing with this. If not State Houses then something for modern times which has the same effect of getting people into homes (I wont even get into why home ownership is important for a modern state/democracy today but there is a wealth of work on the death of the middle class and the goal of neo-liberal markets to sweep away any obstacles to all wealth being consolidated in the hands of a greedy few for anyone with time to read up on it).

So to end, back to my hernia story. It was clear that at some point I would have to make a decision and take action, leaving it off in the hope of it going away would only prolong the agony and the odds of it magically remaining in equilibrium and not rupturing were very low.

So the choice is really between action now under painful but controlled circumstances or emergency surgery later BUT with much more pain and a nasty generational scar that won’t heal over. The latest Labour/Greens spat may heal over until the election but the Michael Jackson impersonations won’t soon go away and Generation Rent might sound like a good musical story but I wouldn’t want to be in it.

Elections have consequences

Posted on by
19

The post below is a rebuttal of sorts to my latest post. its written by my friend and poker buddy Hardly. Hardly is a Wellington professional who made the jump from government service to the private sector and who is now expecting, along with his wife, their first child (I grin gleefully when imagining the face he will make the first time he has to change a nappy). Hardly and I rarely agree on anything except that we both have strong convictions and are willing to debate, discuss and defend them. I am happy to guest post his thoughts here.

It’s beyond cliche to say democracy is a deeply flawed system but better than the alternatives…. The American system is one of the more flawed versions of this system.

Perhaps less commonly repeated is that people always elect the government they deserve but often not the one they need (I know, Batman – guilty as charged).

We live in a time of extraordinary discontent. Not unprecedented – there has been no civil war nor mass outbreak of violence in western society – but it’s clear, the peasants are restless.

Why is this so? Too many wars, not enough jobs and those that exist pay to little, not enough money to go around. Promises were made and not met. The perceived evils that created this – trade, immigration and Muslims.

Vote for Bernie or vote for Trump, your beef is different but your solution is the same – political revolution. For the people to win the system needs to burn.

But did the system let the people down or did the people let the system down. We can debate when the rot set in but perhaps one of the greatest hits democracy ever took was the victory of GW over Al Gore.

Gore’s loss was Bush’s gain. And from this came the Iraq war, tax cuts for the rich, and perhaps the GFC itself. Opponents of the system might argue this was the establishments fault. After all Gore and Bush were both patricians of the establishment and, once in office Bush entrusted power to the his fathers loyal followers, who were establishment through and through.

I don’t see it this way. In 2000 the narrative was “who do you want to have a beer with”. Al Gore the elite politician, was measured against GW the part time politician, part time golfer, part time oil man and part time baseball team manager. A false equivalency was created whereby the major differentiating factor was their personal appeal as the major differentiating factor. Not policy, not judgement, not experience.

When it came to the question of who to have that beer with, enough people wanted to have a beer with GW that he won. Not the popular vote but that wasn’t the game. Experience and intelligence was rejected for likeability because …. well …. because voters are shallow creatures. In hindsight, we know there was so much more at stake but you wouldn’t know it to have watched that election unfold.

That is not the end of the story. Who remembers what other factor swung that election – Ralph Nader. Third parties in the US have always wanted their place in the two party system and the first step on the journey is the funding that comes to a party that achieves 5%. So Ralph Nader and the Green Party set out to reach that 5% and shake the two party machine that controlled American politics. How was this justified – Gore and Bush are two sides of the same coin (I’m making this up but I’m sure something along these lines was said), each is as bad as the other, to have real change we need to change the system - the two party system whose tyranny has led us to where we are now.

Ralph Nader did not get 5%, but he got enough. While Al Gore lost the election by 537 votes in Florida, Ralph gained 97,421 in the same state. Those 97,421 people elected George Bush and defeated the most environmentally committed nominee of a major party. And because Al Gore and George Bush were so very different, GW went on to do so many things which likely outraged those 97,421 people and many more.

So whose fault was George W? The republicans of whom many now denounce him? Ralph Nader voters? For my money, the responsible party is anyone who ever entertained the false equivalency in their mind that GW and Al Gore were the same, somewhat indistinguishable, merely a matter of style. I have more respect for a voter who loved Bush than someone who claimed they were essentially the same. Those people are to blame. They were wrong and their mistake shook the nation and the world.

This year Americans face a choice between Hillary, Trump and an abstention/protest vote. Some people will say Trump and Hillary are each as bad as each other. Some will say that they want to shake the system, to send a message. Some will say they wanted Bernie and won’t support anyone else.

When the vote is in and Trump or Hillary is in the Whitehouse, the consequences will be apparent. Trump’s policy is unknowable, his temperament uncertain and his experience unrelated. Many people will vote for Trump for reasons of anger or agnst, some will vote for him for party loyalty and loathing of Hillary. More will vote for Jill Stein and Gary Johnson out of protest or abstention or a desire to rock the system. One thing is for sure, either Trump or Hillary will win and whatever the outcome, the American people will get the government they deserve but not necessarily the one they need. What is in doubt is whether or not they appreciate how different those two futures really are.

Watching it Bern: Why its OK to vote for Donald Trump

Posted on by
18

I’m going to get flak for this little rant but those that know me know I relish debate and will do my best to honestly defend my position.

So let’s address what I see as the 200 kilogram reptillianoid in the room; the fear driven media hyperbole around Donald Trump possibly being president.

At its simplest the argument runs something like this: better the lesser of two evils, Vote Hillary.

Your average democratic voter might make the partisan argument that Hillary Clinton is actually a good candidate while Donald Trump is a bad one. So vote Hillary.

More articulate commentators will go with the position that The Don is the death of the democratic system in the US so in order to save the system vote for Hillary!

None of these arguments (or related others), I believe, actually does the situation justice and all are essentially falling for the false front articulation that it’s better to save the system than destroy it by allowing a vote for Trump which has been articulated through a range of hysterical hyperbole about trump while simultaneously minimizing or obscuring any concerns or criticisms about Hillary.

Now I am not here to praise or bury either of these two dingbats. I find both to be representative nadirs of their respective political parties, and I am not alone in this, as record numbers of US voters on both sides of the line also have a queasy feeling in their stomach when thinking about ticking the box for either of these political bottom feeders.

But I am here to point out that the dialog being had is not always representative or balanced and in fact the current surge in popularity for anti-establishment candidates (something which I have described as “Fukyoo” politics) is in fact a good thing, an antidote to the sick and dying political systems in the US and democracies around the world.

Conversely attempts by establishments and their respective parties to hold onto their power and position by shutting out candidates like Trump and Bernie Sanders at the expense of everybody else is in fact far worse than allowing these people to genuinely poll. It is in essence highly undemocratic and represents a clear step away from democratic practice and principle and a rather elitist move towards Oligarchy or worse by demonizing potential voters through their choice of candidate.

But I can already hear the howls of outrage and the tensing of fingers on keyboards to point out that this is exactly what Donald Trump is advocating. Really? Is that what Trump represents?

US political history from Watergate on has been a slow starting then sudden plunge into the sleazy abyss in which it now finds itself. Scandals like Iran/Contra, both Gulf Wars, Bush I and II, Clinton, Wag the Dog (the practice of bombing other countries by Clinton to detract from his own scandals in the US), the pardoning of Nixon by Ford, almost everything Ronald (and Nancy) Regan (and their minions) did while in office, Dick Cheney, the Neo Cons and all the blow-back from nearly 70 years of Imperial US rule have preceded both Trump and Sanders. They are the true avatars and inheritors of the toxic spill that US politics has become.

Straddling all this is the two party system which now has a stranglehold on the political discourse, a discourse which filters a plurality of views and opinions through two very large and very coarse partisan viewpoints (if only the had considered MMP!). Third party candidates or dissenting views are not allowed and to outsiders the whole thing has the reek of the protestant vrs catholic religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe. Heresy abounds and you’re either for or against, no dissenting opinions allowed!

“But…” I hear you cry “what about democratic manipulators like Putin in Russia, Berscolini in Italy, Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Blair in the UK, who got in under democratic means then decided to stay by gaming the system in their favour all the while perpetuating hideous crimes against their own people and sometimes other nations? That’s what Trump represents, we have to stop him!”

Easy there Tiger, hold on a second. As disgusting as these candidates appear in retrospect did they actually get power through undemocratic means? Did they seize arrive via a coup? No they did not, they made it in through free and (reasonably) fair elections.

And this is the painful and somewhat upsetting thing about democracy; anyone can run for the top job, be they ex KGB spooks, media tycoons, former freedom fighters or centrist politicians. Speculation about what they will do once in power should not preclude them from running for office. For example who has the highest body count attached to their name out of the four I have listed above? Answer Blair for his involvement in the Invasions of Iraq and the blood in the Balkans. Yet he got genuinely elected by popular mandate. Go figure!

And this is the profoundly undemocratic narrative coming forth in all the anti-trump screeching. Yes he has said some bizarre and at times disturbing things but in many ways he is the same as a candidate who makes all sorts of rash promises while on the campaign trail, only to get a reality check once in office by not being able to deliver on them. Wall on the border with Mexico; not going to happen just on costs alone, banning all Muslims; easier said than done; gold plated trump logo on the White house; … well that’s a possibility.

And in some cases, such as the WW3 worries or Madeline Albright’s comment about “giving the nuclear codes to a man who praises Vladimir Putin and Saddam Hussein” could be defused (no pun intended) by pointing out that Trump has said that US involvement in NATO will be conditional which does not sound like the ranting of a warmonger no matter who his idols are. This also leaves aside Albright’s grim record regarding civilian deaths in Iraq but that’s another story.

But the playing field is not level it seems, as recent revelations about the DNC being secretly opposed to Bernie Sanders and actively working to undermine him all the while saying they were “neutral” have shown. And its duplicity which has torn the Democratic convention in Philadelphia apart with Sanders being booed by his very own supporters when he fronted for Hillary even after the ugly truth of the DNC campaign against him was revealed.

If pressed for an honest answer the DNC might say that they were saving the party from taking the final step off the cliff by preventing  Sanders socialist rhetoric from killing the parties chances in the coming election when in reality Sanders socialist rhetoric was what was making him so popular! And in doing so Sanders was actually stepping away from the wreck of the Democratic Party, at the bottom of the cliff!

And it’s the same for Trump. His message has resonated much stronger than any other Republican contender (not surprising given the morally vacuous shells that got pushed out into the spot light) despite the often ugly tones of his individual statements and in doing so has tapped into the deep wellspring of discontent that has been bubbling away in the US long before Ross Perot ran for president as an independent in 92.

And with Sanders now falling into line behind Clinton all that frustration with the same old faces and the same old system has to go somewhere, which to some extent will go to Trump if Sanders supporters are to be taken at their word (which has been “Anyone but Hillary!”).

So back to the hyperbole, back to the desperate need to avoid Trump by voting Hillary under the assumption that such an action has merit when you don’t really want Hillary either. This is the position more than one possible Hillary voter has taken and talking to my brother and friends in the US has revealed a fear of Trump that’s been stoked by the fires of media manipulation to an extent that they would vote for one person they don’t really want to stop another person they don’t really want.

At the end of the day much of the blame lies with the monolithic two party system in the US which has mechanized politics to such a degree and entrenched various factions so deep into the system that, like the alien face huger in the movie Alien, the victim dies if it is removed. The irony being is that once the face hugger is on its too late as the egg is already implanted in the host and soon the little alien will burst forth in a shower of gore, killing the host in the process. They don’t call them chest bursters for nothing.

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are those aliens. They have come forth in a shower of entrails but they are not the problem; they are the result of the state the system is in. And Hillary Clinton is not Sigourney Weaver running around with a flame thrower and pulse rifle saving the day in this rather tortuous analogy, she is the sinister android, secretly serving the Company by protecting the alien until it’s too late to stop it.

Clinton’s record with her emails, Benghazi and elsewhere is far more demonstrable evidence of dangerous and untrustworthy behavior than anything trump has done.

Clinton has breached national security protocols; Trump has not (yet!). Clinton has narrowly, and many say unfairly, avoided prosecution by the US Justice Department (the head of which was visited, the day before its decision was announced, by Bill Clinton in a completely unconnected, “just happened to be passing” visit) for having a private email server for official government business as Secretary of State no less; Trump has some bankruptcy and a dodgy university to contend with but again this is not on par with exposing state secrets or being considered up for prosecution for doing so.

So I am not buying into the hyperbole and nor will I be regurgitating phrases delivered to me via a compliant media. I wouldn’t be voting for Trump either, I might add, if I was a US citizen but then neither would I be voting for Hillary.

US politics has reaped what it has sown and now it’s time to pay its dues and sinister fantasies about Trump being the harbinger of WW3 are just as much a fiction as the smoke clouds of virtue billowing around Clinton. The two heads, one body, monster that is US politics is dying of its own toxicity and the establishment parasites which have lived off it are dying also.

In short it’s the Arab Spring, US style, writ large across Western Democracies as average citizens come to realize that those who are supposed to represent them are not fulfilling the task they were elected to do and are now expressing extreme discontent by delivering spoiler candidates into the fold, not as a genuine alternate (although I think Sanders could have pulled that off until he turned Judas) but as a resoundingly Joker like solution to the failure of the system. As Alfred says in the Dark Knight, “Some people just want to watch the world burn”

In this context both Trump and Hillary are two fiddlers fighting over who gets to play while Rome burns spectacularly. I think Machiavelli would be very disappointed in both of them.

Lets Get Statistical!

Posted on by
5

I had half of this in the works when the latest results came out so it was a simple case of plugging them into what I was already working on. Apologies for the wonky layout on the stats, I tried, I really did.

Is anyone else slightly amazed at the astounding 10% in Nationals polling from 43% to 53% in one month via Roy Morgan?

Personally I am calling BS on this one right now.

I admit that I might be slightly bias in my opinion of National (see my previous posts where I have referred to them as criminal scumbags et al) but I don’t think even my bias would blind me to the fact that in our current clime of political ineptitude (housing crisis, diary failure, immigration concerns, housing crisis, possible trade wars, water concerns, housing crisis and the repellent and nauseating image of either Clinton or Trump in the Whitehouse) the mood of the nation would suddenly shift 250,000 people to the political right in the space of one month!

And the idea that 10% of the electorate just suddenly jumping to the right seems even more dubious when you look at these numbers:

NAT              53%             (+10%)

LAB              25%             (-2.5%)

GRN              11.5%            (-3.0%)

NZF              7.0%             (-2.0%)

MAR              0.5%              (1.5%)

UNF              0.0%             (Nc)

  ACT              1.0%              (+0.5%)

MAN              0.5%              (-0.5%)

CON              0.5%              (-0.5%)

What stands out is not just the stupendous surge in popularity with National but the large losses to the Greens, Labour and New Zealand First. I could imagine that some NZ First voters might jump ship (being relative neighbors on the political spectrum) but -3% from the Greens?

But Roy Morgan is just one of the three main thermometers (the other two being Colmar Brunton (TV1) and Reid Research (TV3)) taking the rectal temperature of our nation (sorry Fairfax and Digipol you don’t count).

So let’s compare the polling figures for all three from the last month before quarter of a million kiwis decided that National is the way to go (thanks to Curia Market Research for their handy blog which provides and updated blog on all three).

 

Colmar(TV1)         Roy                     Reid(TV3)

NAT       48% (-2%)            43% (-2.5)           47% (+0.3%)

LAB        29% (+1%)           28% (-1.5%)       31.3% (-1.0%)

GRN       12% (+2%)           14.5% (+2.5%)    11.1% (+0.9%)

NZF        9% (nc)                9.0% (+1%)          7.8% (+0.3%)

MAR        0.7% (-0.4%)        1.0% (+1%)          1% (-0.3%)

UNF        0.0% (nc)              0.0% (nc)              0.0 (nc)

ACT         0.3% (-0.4%)        0.5% (+0.5%)       0.4% (-0.4%)

MAN       0.0% (nc)              1% (+1%)               0.0% (nc)

CON        0.7% (+0.4%)        1.0 (+0.5%)           0.0% (-0.7%)

 

METHOD            Rnd Phone      Rnd Phone     Rnd Phone

SAMPLE              1509/1245     868/820        1000

UNDECIDED       15%           5.5%           Unknown

SUBSCRIBE         Yes           No             Yes

MARGIN              +/- 2.5%      n/a            +/- 1.9%

 

What one gets from last month’s polling is that while National was polling higher for the Colmar Brunton and Reid polls (%48 and 47% respectively) the Roy Morgan poll was down at 43% just 30 days ago the movement of National from previous months was down on two out of the three and the third (+0.3%) was well within the margin of error.

Further the average for National from all three polls was just 45%.

And Roy Morgan’s own data from previous months shows National in gentle decline from its previous high of 50% in April last year

This shows that National was either holding steady or declining under the ongoing pressure of current events and its own limp reactions.

David Farrer, who runs Curia, posts about this on KiwiBlog where he breaks the numbers down a bit more and concludes that while probably not a 10% jump the rise, is probably genuine.

Now I know better than to argue stats with anyone interested in stats, as being a stat freak myself (military stats rather than the more usual Kiwi field of sports stats), but they are only as good as their method of collection and the method of processing, and with all due respect to David (and his statistical probabilities of the data being correct), I am just not convinced that National has increased at all.

As David himself notes on Kiwiblog, it’s been a month of “relentless negativity” for the government after previous months of doom and gloom also. So where is the positive direction coming from? Where is the love for Key and his scaly minions hailing? It can’t be the media, the Reserve Bank or the general public.

And what statements or announcements from the Lizard King himself or any announced policy (Nationals weak willed attempt at dealing with the housing crisis?) could be driving this? Where is the momentum for 10% of those being polled to shift to National at the expense of all other parties?

Farrer again has his own take on this calling Roy Morgan a “yo-yo poll” which sounds like a polite way for statisticians to put each other’s work down.

But before we dive into that lets have a bit more of a look at political polling in Godzone.

Firstly two of the big three polls have to confirm to the New Zealand Political Polling Code by being members of the Research Association of New Zealand (RANZ). Guess which poll is not a member? Hint it’s not Colmar or Reid. This is probably because Roy Morgan is based in Australia.

The code is reasonably robust with prescriptions for conducting, reporting and publishing the data covering the sampling, the collection method, the weighting, the margin of error and results. It does have a few grey areas like excluding unlikely voters from the sample but in general is sound and if followed should lead to consistent and accurate results and transparent reporting.

Second have a look at the sample size, Morgans is by far the smallest at 820. Now I know that for polling you don’t need to poll all people to get a representative sample (usually above 1000 is considered acceptable) but I do know that polling at such small levels can magnify small shifts in the data (my own undergrad study in Pol Sci was relentlessly American in technique, which as anyone taught under that system knows is very heavy on data collection and analysis over theory or analysis).

Then there is the margin of error (MOE) and the undecided portion of the polling. Roy Morgan does not have a margin of error that I could find but did have a 5.5% rate of undecided voters. This is not as high as Colmar’s 15% for +/-2.5% margin from a sample of over 1500 people but in a poll of just over 860 people a nearly 50 person hole in the data is problematic to say the least. Also Reids data does not even include the number of people undecided so we only know that it was less than 1000 listed.

Now I’m not linking these two inextricably but in such polls the MOE and percentage of those undecided are key measures for how reliable your data is and not being bound by the Polling Code or having a MOE leaves me concerned at this result, yo-yo poll or not.

Of course Colmar’s 15% hole in the data and Reid’s undeclared undecided are also problems but at least there is a margin of error to give some guarantee and I will be surprised if their new data shows such shifts.

With all three polls there are deeper issues with the data, one of which is the method of polling (calls to households with landlines).  Current data from Stats NZ has landlines in NZ at 85% which means that any house without a landline is automatically excluded.

The standard “wisdom” for this is that any household without a landline would be extremely low income and not likely to vote anyway. The issue is that I myself have a cell phone and an internet connection in my house but not a landline and many people I know don’t have one either being that mobile and internet can cover all the bases in modern life better than a landline can AND we are all politically active (ie we vote!). But that does not appear to register for the pollsters.

So the assumption that no landline equals no political participation is dubious at best and flawed at worst. I do acknowledge that the high rate of non participation in politics in NZ, which is reflected in only 76% of eligible voters voting in the last election, may have some correlation with economic well being and possibly not having a landline but as far as I know there is nothing to show exactly what those numbers are. Buts that’s an issue for another day.

So back to the question, where is National supposedly getting this 10% surge in votes from? Probably, as Farrer noted, there is likely some statistical error or readjustment (ie they were too low so the previous results were out of whack so this month’s result is more a readjustment than a surge in votes. That theory I can accept but I remain dubious of any increase in popularity for National at all given the current pressure they are under.

But apart from my grumbles about Key and Co there is a lot of other interesting data that can be taken from all three polls.

The first is that United Future is 0.0% across the board and with no change from previous polls. Add to this that Dunne currently holds less than a 2% majority in his one and only electorate and it’s not hard to imagine what’s going on in both Peter Dunne’s and the other parties minds as they consider the coming election and any electorates which might be up for Grabs.

Another is that the Maori Party, United Future and ACT are all one seat parties and all living well within the margin of error. Loose that seat and its goodbye baby. In the case of Act and the Maori Party both hold comfortable majorities (12% and over 20% respectively) but as noted above United Future is the straggling calf in the herd of political Wildebeest and the predators are circling.

Another interesting statistic is that if you add Mana and The Conservatives to the above three then five out of the nine parties in the poll are functioning non entities politically (ie no real representation in NZ). All live within the margin of error and all are political equivalent of the living dead if not actually dead (Mana and the Conservatives). The fact that all these zombie political parties, barring Mana, are or would assemble under the banner of National cements John Keys status as the Necromancer king of New Zealand politics.

But the most telling statistics of them all is that no matter how much National is up or down in the polls no combination of Labour and the Greens has enough to beat National at this time. They come close, ironically, in the Roy Morgan poll of last month, but nowhere can they actually get enough in the numbers to beat any poll result national has.

And if you’re thinking like I am thinking then you already know what those results are really saying, which has been said before by myself and many others, which is that the balance of power in all of this remains the MP for Northland, Winston Peters!

But with the current Roy Morgan results not even Winston can help the Greens and Labour but as I have been saying I do not believe the results to be that high and such polling always gets closer come election time as minds are made up and campaigning has an effect.

And why did Labour go down in the polls after announcing its own policy on housing which is streets ahead of Nationals own tepid response? There had been cautious indicators that the Labour/Greens MOU had helped build both brands and raise both in the polls but the current stats would have us believe that both have suffered for it and for actually proposing a solution to the housing circus.

So what has happened here? Did National pay someone at Roy Morgan to fudge the results? I would not put it past them but let’s assume no for the moment.

But the message, if echoed by the other two polls results (soon to be out), could have a chilling effect on any momentum the two parties have been building up the last months as they keep the pressure on the government through an ongoing barrage of criticism AND alternate solutions.

Political polling is the barometer of modern politics with its desperate reliance on unstable voter bases and shiftless ideologies. But as I use the barometer in my kitchen to give me an idea of the what the next 24 hours weather will be I also take those results with a grain of salt as the local and immediate reality can and does differ.

Most of the time we take political polls as gospel and never question their results, they are the life giving air that inflates or deflates party fortunes in western democracies far more than anywhere else in the world but they are, at the end of the day, just statistics and while a useful tool and just measure of past performance are not, in the quantum storm that is politics, always a good indicator of things to come.

I remain dubious of the 10% jump in preference as well as National having any uptake in the current round of political polling but I will have to respect the data if they all come in with the same conclusion. The question I would then ask is why? This is something that the stats and statistical data can never really answer.

The Language of Violence

Posted on by
12

There was an attempted coup in Turkey on the weekend. So far there are no real details on why and militaries can end up intervening in politics for a variety of reasons. Jets were scrambled, an attack helicopter was shot down and people massed in the streets and suddenly as it started it was over.

What is known is that while Erdogan is back in power I don’t think this is really a victory for democracy as he has become increasingly authoritarian over time and been connected to more than one scandal while in government.

Already the media has been talking about “purges” of both bad military personnel and anyone else who happens to oppose him so don’t expect the underlying issues which sparked the coup to go away anytime soon.

Add to this an ongoing bombing campaign in Turkey, often directed at military personnel and the “fun fun fun” next door in Syria and it’s not too difficult to see what may have been going through the minds of the plotters when they decided to have a coup.

The death toll from all of this is around 300 and it appears that those in the coup maker’s side decided to fire on civilians at least once, which while not the turning point, would not have been a recommended means to gather support when overthrowing a government.

Meanwhile in the US more police officers are dead in what is starting to appear to be tit for tat style killings in response to police killing various black American males.

While tragic I can’t help but feel somewhat concerned that in a nation full of guns and racial tensions (among other things) this is not going to be the last time this happens. An example has been set and if the police continue to use guns as a means to enforce the law then expect others to do so as well in response to issues of police behaving lawlessly.

And while somewhat peripheral to the situation, killings those tasked to enforce the law is a text book indicator of a brewing insurgency. Usually these acts happen to not only send a message and destabilize the current authority (allowing the insurgent to substitute its own authority) but to also acquire weapons to which further the struggle but in gun crazy USA there is no need to worry about getting your hands on high power weaponry (thanks NRA!) so consider this just a message sent.

Politicians and pundits wring their hands, the president says something reassuring but I can’t see any political means for the US to step away from this. The US looks more and more like an apartheid state every day and nothing I hear from friends and family living there gives me any indication that the horrible momentum of a dying super power will be arrested before the inevitable fall happens (for those who would like to get an indicator of how this goes I strongly recomend Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as a text book read for how Empires fail).

And over in Asia the sabers are being rattled after the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) decided to enforce the UNCLOS (United Nations Law of the Sea) against Chinese actions in the South China Sea, deeming them illegal.

Will that actually stop China from building islands and military bases on coral reefs and atolls and behaving belligerently? Probably not as the immediate response out of Beijing was to declare it “rigged” in favor of the West which I would normally consider an appropriate response from China but in this instance just smacks of sour grapes.

In fact I expect immediate action form China in the wake of this as its already verbally blasted Australia for commenting unfavorably on this and I wonder if our current trade spat with China might be related to our not kowtowing to China on this issue.

What is clear that this one has been slow brewing for the past half-decade and even longer once you get into the history of it (one of my specialist areas of Masters study) and with natural resources like fishing, possible oil, and territorial sovereignty on the line among China, Taiwan, The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Japan (as something similar is brewing between Japan and China over disputed islands between them) no body is likely to be able, or willing to back down.

Add to this increased naval and related weapons sales to all parties and the US firmly opposed to China on this issue and you have all the makings of a cold war style thriller (which, if I remember correctly, was actually predicted by some Cold War style Tom Clancy type novelist in the 1980’s, whose names escapes me at this time).

And finally in NZ we have two individuals shot dead by the Police in one week. Both may have been in self-defense and both may have been justified (as details, while sketchy, seem to indicate that it was a means of last resort or in the face of imminent threat) but again the message is clear and unlike the US not (at least yet) a common occurrence in our society.

There is no common thread among these events except one which is, as the song* says, that “death is the silence” in the language of violence.

*-The Language of Violence by The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy

 

 

 

Scratching the Nine Year Itch

Posted on by
1

Updated by me after I had a nap and realized that I had missed some pertinent details, I’m on school holiday leave and chasing kids has left me zonked.

Well the announcement has been made and the policy revealed and while I have not had time to dig all the way into things it seems on first look to be a clear and measured response to the housing “situation”.

What is on table are a combination of 10,000 new houses a year until things are “better” (under a revamped Kiwibuild program) and a policy to limit housing speculators (a penalty for anyone selling a house in the first five years after purchase which is not their only or first home).

The extra homes seems an obvious fix and the anti speculation policy seems to be on the mark as well, given the almost immediate howls of outrage from sections of the market. Whether they will work or not remain to be seen but that’s the fate of any policy so such a worry is a moot point at this time.

There are some extra details hidden in the main read which appear to be that the 10,000 new houses will be paid for in the long run by their eventual sale to their tenants which appears to be a neat way to dovetail state housing into actual home ownership. If this is the case then this seems to be a rather pragmatic, dare I say win/win, mix of state and market.

I would love to know who in Labour actually come up with these ideas as they seem to be less political bombast and more actual soundly thought out policy, probably not any of the actual MPs. If this is the work of some Labour policy wonk then well done to them.

In short its a mix of state housing (something I predicted) and market controls (something I did not).

But in my last post I noted that for this to work we would have to have a comprehensive policy AND it would have to have some uptake with the voting public.

So while we have the first the second has yet to show itself but the next round of public polling should provide some clarification there.

And if it does show up in the numbers (even if small) then its a solid first step on the road to electoral victory for Labour in 2017.

Yes it is a big prediction but as an “astute political analyst” we get the kudos and the big bucks for seeing things before they become clear and despite the obviousness of Labours low political polling I think things are heading towards the usual situation we get with every third term government in recent memory.

And I dont think I am alone in this as a recent article in the media about National needing to think about a post Key enviroment echoing my own comments from a few months ago seems to indicate that while Key retains his personal popularity the fortunes of the party are now starting to take a beating under a constant barrage of grumbling in both the public and media regarding it’s inability to have a coherent response to anything except vomit forth political and statistical double speak.

This means that when Key leaves (and takes his high polling with him) National had better have a Plan B beyond allowing the various mutants and misanthropes in Nationals cabinet to descend in a power struggle similar to what has marred Labour in the last two terms (although I must admit I relish watching that ugly scenario play itself out and National return to its dead duck status of the early 2000s; with a forest of knives sticking out of various Cabinet members backs).

A good example of this is the recent Housing NZ furor with Steven Joyce’s $92 Million tweet sounding less like a pre-planned policy or decision and more a bunch of school kids trying to hide the body before teacher finds it. Did he jump the gun, did he misspeak, who knows but I can only assume some angry phone calls among the minions as things were sorted out.

I would add here that if it is victory for Labour it wont be alone as even with a rising tide of public opinion Little and Co are unlikely to get across the line without the help of their “good buddies” the Greens and Winston so while a good policy is a start Andrew Little had better still be watching what their mood on this is.

So for me, and I remind readers that I am not a fan of Labour anymore than I am of National, this announcement is the start of something. The usual nine year itch is starting to manifest itself in a persistent rash of grumbling about “the government” and its dealing with whatever is the “problems” of the moment (I dont know what it was under Helen Clark in 2007 as I was living in Asia at the time) and we are still a year out (at least if the recent slip by the President of the National Party can be believed about National calling an early election).

So where to from here? For me I will await the next round of polling to see if this new policy has actually sparked any interest in the public. And even if its only a low jump in the polls it will be enough of an indicator for me as the political environment in NZ is starting to flux and Nationals policy of keeping its head down is looking more like a head in the sand attitude than anything else.

If no change in polling the its back to the drawing board and expect another tilt at the windmill some time soon.

But for those with a yen to know the future now is a good time to think about what schemes and plans National will be cranking out in its Dirty Politics division to shut down Labour and its message (also deflecting on the lack of anything National is doing), as I don’t think National will be able to roll out any positive policy between now and whenever we go to polls, as it had numerous chances, in the last six months to shine and has botched them all to one degree or another.

So expect those evil little minions in the PMs office and adjoining spaces to start digging for dirt and loading the muck throwers. Already there has been a rather bitter remark from Steven Joyce that all that Labour has announced they (National) have already been doing but I see little to support that.

But muck or not this is a rather good start from Little and Co and if followed by more could be a good base for going into 2017. Seems like I was not the only one to think Labour needed to take a page from Norm Kirk’s good times school of vote mongering if it wanted to get back in the game and address the current problem/situation/crisis (you choose) regarding housing in NZ.

But crisis or not the market in Auckland (and the rest of NZ) needs cooling and more houses ASAP and Nationals infrastructure policy was so politically lightweight as to not even be trying. Labours new policy, if actually enacted, appears to be a more direct and immediate reaction but requires Labour to be in government to enact it.

In one way its a rather shrewd policy as it addresses the immediate situation but has a rather subtle “Labour has to be in government for this to happen” aspect to it which is as good as it gets for sneaky electioneering.

So consider this a rather prolonged scratch at that particular itch of nine years of the same government going to seed, becoming increasingly detached from the electorate and now officially asleep at the wheel.

History will not Absolve You!*

Posted on by
2

“You may pronounce us guilty a thousand times, but the Goddess who presides over the Eternal Court of History will, with a smile, tear in pieces the charge of the Public Prosecutor and the verdict of this court. For she acquits us.” 

In the wake of the Chilcot Report, which made it clear that the decision to go to war in Iraq was made on the basis of “faulty” (which is a polite way of saying manufactured) information and that war was not the last option but pretty much the first from the get go comes as a damning indictment of Tony Blair and the then government’s decision to go to war.

Blair himself has been unrepentant but I have never expected Poodle Blair to ever admit fault but I was surprised by the harsh tones of the report as I had expected it to be a whitewash of history. So once in a while I am pleasantly surprised and I don’t think the issue is going to go away in the UK any time soon, if anything the report’s findings will be fuel for the fire of not just the relatives of the dead but the soldiers who came back scarred both mentally and physically.

Blair of course has stuck with the tired and spineless line that issues with the intel or otherwise removing Saddam (and all the other blunders that Iraq turned into) was the right course of action, history will judge him.

Even at the time the intel was saying the case was bad, even before the war it was turning into a snow job of biblical proportions as the war drums were being beat. I clearly remember the Christchurch Press screaming headlines about Saddam and the need for his removal while my co-workers at the time regurgitated the same blather the media was feeding them right on cue. If I had ever needed a functional example of manufactured consent here it was alive and in my face (telling me Saddam had nukes and it could happen in NZ). It was the same gibberish as the first Gulf War but now with 50% more neo-con BS.

Forgetting that Saddam had previously had been a friend of the West, had been given arms and intel by them when he was fighting Iran (who could possibly forget the photo of Saddam and Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands at a meeting some time in the mid 1980’s) it was still a dud argument but when ever has the truth ever gotten in the way of a good war.

Meanwhile in New Zealand, John Key comes out in support of Blair and the war (here) and has refused to accept that he is on the “wrong side of history” under the similar argument of “well we made the decision on the basis of the information we had at the time so hindsight is a wonderful thing but you gotta make omelets”.

Really? O’rilly? Exsqueeze me? Baking soda? What is this BS? Aheenaheenaheena!*

John Key, the son of an Austrian Jewish refugee mother and an English father who fought in the Spanish Civil War (I can only assume on the republican side given his nationality) and World War II. If anyone should have been raised with a sound and emphatic understanding of the horrors of fascism and war it should have been him.

So I can only assume that this hollow man has forgotten his background and where he has come from and what his parents went through in making such a shameful statement. In fact the more I think about it the more the hideous levels of irony shines through like vomit on a stained glass window.

It’s very easy for a man, a leader of a nation, to send men off to war when it’s done from the comfort of his office, thousands of miles away from the fighting. It’s even easier for a man sitting in an office a thousand miles away, to support such a grotesque decision when there is no consequence for him in slavish obedience to foolish rhetoric and evil lies.

My Great Grandfather fought in the First World War, my Grandfather in the Second, my father in middle east in the 60s, I have friends from my military days who did time in Iraq as contractors and I have attended more Anzac day parades and the functions after at RSAs than I can remember (possibly due to the hefty quantities of Navy Rum on offer at the time) and at no point can I recall hearing any of those individuals expressing support for any decision to go to war.

War may have been necessary as a final action (as many in the case of WW2 have made), but it was the final resort of those who would fight if they had to but wished to avoid it if at all possible; not the first choice of greedy little men who will never actually face the guns or have to worry about a loved one dying in some bloody conflict.

To be fair I have heard many stories about the adventures had during war time (especially my Grandfathers escapades in Egypt and Libya as a dispatch rider in WW2 and my fathers time dodging bullets as a UN Peacekeeper) but these were always in context that the war itself was a monstrous affair from which the horrors of the conflict was never far away from the Boys Own adventure moments which they recalled.

More pertinently of those I know who went and made some “easy money” in Iraq (as one of my mates describes his $100,000 plus a year, US, tax free contract doing security on convoys from Basra to Baghdad) one refused to re-up for a second tour, despite the increased pay and bonuses on offer and the second bailed less than six months into the second citing scenes that made my hair stand on end (he decided to get out after he got covered in the brains of the driver on the truck he was riding on due to some high caliber round punching though the trucks windshield, and the drivers head). None of them described Iraq in less than horrific terms.***

So I have issues when John Key boldly asserts that he will be on the right side of history in regards to the Iraq War, big issues.

It does explain why things like the housing crisis, homelessness and the general misery that successive National Governments have inflicted on New Zealand do not even register on his compassionate radar. If sending people off to die for no real purpose is not going to faze him then being the man responsible for maintaining the current and ongoing misery of the neo-liberal market state probably has absolutely no emotional or emphatic resonance in the cold depth of his reptilian brain.

Perhaps he would feel different if his wannabe DJ, playboy son, decided to enlist and get sent off on some dodgy neo-colonial war for no real reason but $$$ or his faux artist daughter was the victim of some terrorist attack in a European capital as a flow on effect of the disruption caused by that war, I hope he would feel different but I cannot say for sure.

And while I was never a fan of Helen Clark I respected her decision to keep NZ out of the conflict, I even understood her decision to scrap the combat air arm of the Air Force. As someone with a strong military background (and a lifelong interest in all things military) I can still be pragmatic enough to see the logic for her decisions and the reasons for staying out of what has been fairly labelled an unjust war.

No Iraq War, probably no ISIS/Daesh, possibly no Syrian War, possibly a lot less bloodshed in the Middle East, definitely no Imperial AmeriKa running amok, possibly even no Donald Trump/Hilary Clinton monster on our political horizon. The possibilities are endless.

Oh and for those wondering about the quote at the start of this post. Its from Hitlers trial in 1924 after he tried to take over Bavaria in the Beer Hall Putsch.

*-title courtesy of Fidel castro

**- Statements of disbelief courtesy of The Internet,Waynes World , Generation Ecch and De La Soul

***- For those interested try googling for videos of US convoys doing the run from Basra to Baghdad and back and see how much you would like that job despite the salary

Has Labour Just Hinted at a Socialist, State Intervention Housing Policy?

Posted on by
14

I’m a gambling man so I will happily take odds on this one. All bets payable next Monday morning.

I see that Andrew Little has announced Labour’s new policy on fixing the housing crisis but will drop the actual details on the weekend (link here).

Somehow I don’t think the fact that he announced it days after National wheeled out its own policy for solving the housing crisis was a coincidence.

For Little this is a big opportunity, National have dropped the ball in regards to housing time and again and, as many have said, “mucked around the edges” rather than do anything concrete to fix a situation that shows no sign of fixing itself.

If Labours new policy has some genuine fixes to the situation and is not just another policy gimmick then expect this to be a game changer in the coming election because if you don’t think housing will be an issue in voters’ minds in 2017 then you might as well click off this page, shut the computer down and take a walk round your ultra-palatial, multimillion dollar, property because you are probably the only person in New Zealand that thinks so.

Housing has been a running theme for several years now but the magnitude of the problem is no longer able to be ignored or swept under the rug. If normally hands off National has been forced to wheel out some sort of “policy response” to address the growing concern then you know it’s a growing issue.

As Chris Trotter noted in today’s paper, National has nothing less than the removal of the state from the housing market in NZ as its stated goal and anything they do is not going to change that. Its new policy sounds less like a fix, as other commentators have already pointed out, and more like a desperate illusion of a government out of ideas and unwilling to upset its backers who profit from the current housing crisis.

And John Key knows this as his warning to party faithful at the recent party conference in Christchurch last weekend (just down the road from my house) was all about not being complacent and expecting to breeze into a fourth term.

Perhaps it was also an understanding that Brand Key has lost some of its gloss and simply relying on a series of public relations spin and plastering his face on billboards won’t fix things (unless someone is going to build houses out of those billboards).

So National has played its cards on the housing crisis and Andrew Little and Labour (scrappy rebels that they are) have seen an opening and decided to take it by announcing their own solution to the housing crisis.

This is the “stealing the narrative oxygen” strategy I noted a few weeks back and the potential to make big political capital off this is not to be sneezed at.

But as always the proof is in the pudding and we will have to wait until the weekend to find out.

The media has already done some speculation on what’s coming up (by linking it to Labours Kiwibuild policy) and Little himself has hinted some more by noting that whatever else the policy will do it will get houses prices to “a figure that’s affordable”.

But what is “affordable”? Is it around $500,000 as Little seems to think? And if we take his anti-speculator comments as real then these questions become even more pertinent as where is the line between owning a house and speculation? Is it when you own more than one house? Is it when the average property is around $500,000 (as opposed to the $1,000,000 it is now for a house in Auckland)? Where does it lie?

What policy prescriptions will be given that will do anything to stop a bubble housing market from getting bigger, or worse reducing the damage from when the bubble bursts? The answer to this looming bubble of doom and gloom is likely to be, say it with me, STATE INTERVENTION, as leaving the market to continue on as it has been will clearly do nothing and there is no alternate other than state intervention to address a clear market imbalance (if readers have any other suggestions please feel free to add them in the comments).

Don’t think Labour won’t go down this road? Afraid that the Labour of the past three decades will rear its ugly head and roll over for the market? Well you may be right but in the climate of New Zealand’s housing crisis as well as the international mood of growing dissatisfaction with the Status quo means Little and Labour would be mad to not a) propose a vote winning solution to New Zealand number one issue; and b) tap into the growing dissent around the same old same olds of politics in Aotearoa.

The alternates are not pretty, especially now that Labour in the UK has effectively decided that outright public squabbling is the way to go and the recent results at the ballot box in Oz show that voters can’t make up their minds either.

And Andrew Little will have been watching his counterparts in the UK and OZ and doing the math in his head. He knows, as do many many others, that his position is only as secure as the support he has in cabinet, public perception of him and the ability of the Party to counter the current government in policy prescription.

So wheeling out more of the same is not likely to gain support of the public or the party and this is not a crisis that will just go away especially when the Reserve Bank, fronted by Graeme Wheeler is warning of a “sharp correction” in the housing market.

So in my mind the die has been cast, Little and Labour are going to announce a new housing policy which will be in effect ‘State Houses part II’. It makes sense and it would address the problem. It also is a clear distinction with National which is going to be key to winning the next election.

The opportunity here is prime and for a limited time only. The effect on the situation if Labour announced a sure and dedicated expansion in affordable public housing would be immense and tap into so many strands of concern that exists today (increasing homelessness, price speculation, the housing shortage etc).

If Labour don’t have anything which is a real solution AND catches the public’s imagination then expect a long and painful 16 months until the next election. We have the next five days to speculate. Go!

Peter Dunne: New Zealand’s Most Successful Politician?

Posted on by
10

Word around the campfire (several campfires in fact) is that Peter Dunne is a good minister.

I open with this little bit of information to be fair in the information I present (yeah right!) and to balance out my following assessment of him.

You see, unlike my other research into political parties and the individuals that compose them (a process which usually consists of me trolling the internet, checking my library, badgering my sources and “polling” those around me for a general opinion of the situation) I did not turn up the usual treasure trove of data, Wellington gossip, internet foot prints or scathing rants attached to the Peter or the United Future Party.

Oh to be sure there were some juicy slabs of salacious gossip abounding but none which could be verified beyond even the merest rumor and as such I decided to leave such things out and focus on what I actually could confirm by more than one source.

Which lead to a surprising amount of people, from many places in government, having nothing but praise for the man in his role as both current (DIA) and previous (IRD) ministerial positions (and various sub and acting ministerial roles).

It seems that Peter Dunne is the kind of minister that Chief Executives and Permanent Secretaries like (except for those truly aspiring to be Sir Humphrey Appleby) as he is intelligent enough to know the material, studious enough to know it in detail, pragmatic enough to take advice given and principled enough still make decisions in line with the party ideals and general values.

Dunne is not one of those ministers that require vast amounts of baby-sitting (Sam Lotu-Liga in the wake of the Serco debacle and his rapid removal from the corrections portfolio to something much much safer (and far less important); the Local Government portfolio); is a power hungry profiteer (Steven Joyce); dangerously ignorant (Murray McCully and Jerry Brownlee) or one of those empty political vessels which then become an avatar of greed, avarice and naked ambition (Judith Collins and most of the remaining vermin in cabinet).

All of which soon overwhelmed my own preconceived notions of him as a bow tie wearing political hack who simply went whatever which way the winds were blowing and who was now a dangerous relic helping to prop up an increasingly unpopular government.

It was my good friend Q who pointed out one night over drinks that while Dunne was all of those things that I believed he was (and Q should know having spent a good deal of time actually walking the halls of parliament playing nurse maid to its many skeezy denizens in both Labour and National governments) he also had many of the better points I have listed above and while still a political creature he could be considered “one of the better examples of the breed”.

On first hearing this I nearly choked on my drink as Q, while the perfect example of the legal/rational devil’s advocate type that can be found in Wellington if you look hard enough, was not known for laying out such glowing endorsements for MPs without an equal measure of dirty laundry culled from his time as first hand witness to their grubby behaviors.

But there was no skid marked Y-fronts to be found this time and I had to accept the fact if I was looking for examples of the usual slimy tendencies that politicians display I would be better suited to look elsewhere.

And so it went, time and again, over drinks, dinner and in the tea-break small talk between meetings which make up the bulk of the time any actual work in Wellington is achieved (for further details I direct the reader to Parkinson’s Law). Same story, again and again; competent minister, rational individual, good to work for and such and so forth.

Which meant that by the time I came to write this I felt compelled to open in the manner I just have which for me is a hard thing to do. I rate politicians just above pedophiles and just below lawyers.

But the subconscious nag which kept running in the back of my mind that accepting Minister Dunne as some sort of silver slipper bobbing among the turds in the parliamentary toilet bowl was wrong just would not go away.

So it was time to put some Jazz on the turntable, pop open a few beers, lie back on the couch in my usual meditative (or just plain lazy) position (fingers in the traditional Monty Burns “excellent!” manner) and think things through.

So after a few Montheiths and several sides of Donald Byrd I felt I had a handle on things and it went a little something like this.

Peter Dunne has been in politics, and parliament, for over 30 years. First as a member of the Labour Party (he entered in 1984) and later as an Independent MP and then as part of various assemblages of parties which eventually ended up under the banner of United Future.

And Dunne, like his significant doppelganger Winston Peters, has been in coalition with both Labour and National, supporting both governments and holding ministerial positions in both. Both have developed into one man band operations, despite the veneer of party structure each has assembled around them.

Both men have seen various bills through parliament and both have had their moments of controversy (although Winston could claim a lot more) and both have fallen afoul of the particular government of the day (Peters with both National and Labour and Dunne with National in 2013 over his leaking of documents to journo Andrea Vance).

But NZ First, as a party, appears a lot more coherent, if more sycophantic (I am always impressed when Winston storms or is thrown out of the house and his drones obediently follow) while United Future is a shell party assembled to give the illusion (for those who remember the de-registration saga in 2013) of coherent support outside of Dunne’s immediate staff so he can continue to receive government funding and allow Dunne to remain in parliament.

Where the symbiosis ends is that while Peters has championed the cause of the proverbial, and possibly theoretical, Kiwi, Dunne has not. Peters has retained a constituency outside of any particular electorate despite his win in Northland and his loss of his previous long held seat in Tauranga while Dunne has only ever held one seat (now by the slimmest of margins), Ohariu in Wellington.

From the Numbers side United Future has sunk in public polling from 6% in 2002 to 0.27% in 2014 while Dunnes margin in his home electorate has shrunk to a few percentage points ahead of Labour (36% to 34% in the 2014 election) and with National and the Greens holding healthy shares as well (National at 16% and the Greens at 7%).

NZ First on the other hand stole 54% of the votes in an electorate in had not really polled in before (Northland) and NZ first holds at around 7% to 10% on any given day in the party popularity stakes.

This means that as a political party United Future is a non-existent entity with no mandate of any kind and with a single MP who holds his electorate by the barest of margins due to a fractured makeup (the previously grumbles by Charles Chauvel of Labour in 2011 that Dunne had won the seat due to a deal with National to feed voters to United Future was probably sour grapes on Chauvels part but to me it would be less a case of National doing a deal with Dunne and more National simply encouraging its voters to “vote strategically” by supporting Dunne without any conspiracy needed to keep Dunne in power knowing that they could not win it themselves and to keep Labour out).

And the party website reflects all of this with sparse (if any) policy prescriptions, a list of members which appear to be entirely composed of all the individuals who care about the party (when you read their bios) and tag line “Economically responsible, socially conservative” all of which screams “dead man walking” in our current political climate. Granted it’s not as bad as ACTs website but that is a matter of degree not difference.

And Dunne is a dead man walking, he is a statistical anomaly who exists because he has carefully created a niche in the MMP ecosystem where he can remain and exploit his position in governments which require minor party support to make a majority.

He has played key roles in getting many pieces of legislation through the house and none worse than his deciding vote in making government asset sales a reality (which for me was the turning point where I went from seeing Dunne as a true inhabitant of the middle ground to a servant of the power).

His competence as a minister is commendable but not a saving grace in such a situation. And while I do believe that he is a genuinely principled individual (as his willingness to criticize the government of the day can sometimes show) his position in the system (and the actions he takes) comes at a far greater costs to the country than any service he has given to his electorate or imaginary party supporters.

Where Winston Peters is an out and out political showman demagogue grandstanding on issues to cynically get votes and keep punching his meal ticket Dunne has quietly enabled the slow motion train wreck (although he is not alone in this) that New Zealand politics has become by being one of the “silent majority” that has helped keep the neo-liberal reforms in place and the machine oiled and running.

It’s all there on the United Future Website where it tells the visitor that they are part of a “global movement” under which the flag of neo liberalism is proudly flown and in his own history when his move out of Labour in the 1980s came after Rodger Douglas and the other right wingers had already exited and Dunne was left alone in a party with blood on its hands and trying to rid itself of the remaining guilty candidates (of which Dunne was one).

But let’s compare further with his significant other. Winston’s great(est) moment in the political spot light was the Wine box inquiry which saw him expose the seedy underbelly of New Zealand for all to see through his uncanny ability to grab an issue and extract maximum fury from it while Dunne’s was his refusal to handover all his emails to a government inquiry which saw him vilified for a short while by National (and many in public) and then let back into the beehive clubhouse. Winston remains a potent threat to any government in that he will scramble their entire agenda if it warrants or he does not get what he wants.

Dunne can occasionally express mild upset or disapproval at various tweaks of government policy (as his rather entertaining twitter feed shows) but his protestations usually amount silent farts of apathy and reek of a schizophrenia of morals rather than any real outrage or protest.

And it is there that the difference shows, as a true centrist Peters remains a threat to either side and retains his King maker mystique while Dunne is an accomplice to whatever government will pay his price but without any real threat value. I admit that it’s a small difference but in MMP politics it’s a crucial one; that of unpredictability and exposure vrs predictability and acquiescence.

Some had said that Peter Dunne died in the 90s along with Jim Anderton and the Alliance (yes I know he was an MP till 2011 but he was another example of a MP leeching off his electorate) and was resurrected in 2002 by the “Worm” used to monitor the statements made by MPs during the televised debates (and lets not start on the Worm right now, a more blatant example of election engineering I cannot think of).

If that is the case and Dunne owes his current existence to a cheap TV gimmick then he has done well from this quirk of fate but in the final analysis he, like Peters, Anderton and ACT, is a child of MMP and the system allows for such creatures but unlike Winston, Dunne is on borrowed time as the only thing holding him in place is the fact that any push by Labour to unseat him might drive voters in his electorate in the arms of National as much as themselves. But a desperate Labour might just be tempted to risk it to get one more “easy” seat come a tight 2017 race.

But I leave the final words to my good friend Q who in his measured tones noted that despite all of the vitriol I could muster Peter Dunne may actually be the “most successful politician in NZ politics today” having served both as a MP continuously for over 30 years (Winston has 40 but it has gaps out of office and his limited time helming actual portfolios weakens his legacy) and for long stretches as a minister in many governments which is not a feat that many politicians can boast of.

Of course that was a pure measurement on the scale of politics devoid of morality of anything else (Q is a trained lawyer after all) but grudgingly I would have to agree with him.

Brexit Smecksxit

Posted on by
2

Still cant finish writing about Peter Dunne, thankfully we live in interesting times.

So the UK is leaving the EU. I can’t say I was surprised with the outcome but I have been with the post vote situation.

Either way it was a doom and gloom scenario for some people. If the vote was Leave then the UK sinks beneath the waves in an orgy of chaos and anarchy. If it was Stay then the UK is flooded with refugees and all semblance of English culture is washed away.

What has been interesting is that, much like the US and other democracies around the world, the established political order is being split along lines which have little to do with the prevailing political orthodoxy and more to do with the economic realities of their respective countries.

But it was the post vote grumbling that first got my attention as it appears that many of those who did not (and in some cases did) vote in the referendum have now decided that they don’t like the outcome and want another referendum so they can vote (a petition has been circulating) or demanding a weighting system for voters based on their age (so that the younger voters get more weight to any vote over the older). Both of these are the political equivalents of science fiction.

While democracy is a complex and often flawed beast it works the best at expressing the will of the people and usually only needs a majority to get a decision or change enacted and in the UK it appears that the older voters got out more than the young in an referendum with approximately 75% of the able population casting a vote. So while a close result (51% to 49%) there is not likely to be any going back because imagine the precedent such an action would set.

Don’t like the first outcome of an election or referendum? Have another and keep on until you get the outcome you desire (if such a thing is possible) while allowing the rest of the population to get the outcome they want. No, not going to happen! No government (much less a democratic one) in its right mind is going to let such a plant take root and flower as the fruits are surely chaos and civil war.

Meanwhile David Cameron has decided to step down after staking his reputation on the country remaining in the EU, which seems like a good outcome for those which don’t like Cameron and what he represents but few have seemed to consider who, or what, will fill his shoes and already the talk has turned to things like snap elections and “reaffirming the mandate”.

Possibly it will be Boris Johnson, ex-mayor of London and Tory MP who at least appears to have a sense of humor if his quotes are to be believed* but appears to be too controversial a figure to the more conservative members of the party to get the top job, but in these volatile times strange things can happen.

And in “possibly related” circumstances Jeremy Corbyn is facing down mass insurrection in his shadow cabinet over his failure to mobilize the populace to vote no to leaving with 35 MPs walking and Labours London youth wing spitting the dummy.

It’s been interesting to watch the degrees of reporting in the various totally not partisan English media about this but for me Corbyn has had the last word, at least for now, by tweeting that he was “elected as the Labour Party’s leader to redistribute wealth and power” as he retains the support of the actual party and the unions and that should be enough (for now).

Which makes sense if the argument that the voting in the brexit was along financial (and class) lines with those who were doing well and living in London arguing to stay while those who were not so well off and/or not living in London voting to leave (including a fair selection of recent immigrants to the UK if reports are to be believed).

It seems that Labour UK has finally reached the point where the contradictions inherent in the party have brought the situation to the point of crisis. It had been simmering away for some time since Corbyns rise to become party leader but perhaps the Champagne socialists in party needed an excuse to revolt and this looks to be it.

And between pondering what (or how many) knives Corbyn will soon be picking out of his back or what shambling horror will replace Cameron my thoughts briefly turned to Andrew Little and John Key here in safe, clean and neat New Zealand and how their situations would turn out if there was a vote for NZ to amalgamate with OZ or the South Island to split from the North (say goodbye to hydro power north island!).

But the most mind blowing of the things to come out of this post vote dust storm is the fact that Nigel Farage and UKIP have in effect backed away from reneged on  the very promises  they made while campaigning for the UK to leave (money spent on the EU would be transferred to the NHS), the day after they got the desired outcome!

Farage played rather loose on TV by claiming that it was not him but “the party” which had made this decision and I was left wondering if the two halves of his brain were actually connected as rarely has a politician so blatantly, rapidly and publicly reneged on a campaign promise (and survived!).

So it would be probably fair to say that the UK is in a little bit of turmoil at the moment

 

*- “My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive.”

“The dreadful truth is that when people come to see their MP they have run out of better ideas.”