National Party climbs closer to record high in latest NZ opinion poll...

National Party climbs closer to record high in NZ opinion poll...

PM John Key

Prime Minister John Key. Photo / Mark MitchellThe National Government's support has risen to near record levels while Labour's polling has fallen below the 30 per cent mark in a 3News poll reported last night.



According to the Reid Research poll, National's support was up 2.9 percentage points to 57.5 per cent, not far off the record 60 per cent it hit in the same poll two years ago.



Labour was down 3.8 percentage points to 27.1 per cent.



The Greens were down half a point to 7.7 per cent, NZ First down half a point to 2.8 per cent.



The Maori Party was up marginally at 2.5, and Act picked itself up off the floor, rising 1.1 points to 1.7 per cent, while United Future remained the cellar dweller at 0.2 per cent.



Labour also fared poorly by the preferred prime minister measure. As Prime Minister John Key rose a touch to 52.4 per cent, Phil Goff remained at 6.8 per cent.



Commenting on the result, Mr Key told 3News National was "very focused on the issues that matter to New Zealanders - they are in relation to the economy, the earthquake, law and order".



"The contrast between us and Labour is that Labour are focused on themselves."



Mr Goff, who in the past month has had to contend with the Darren Hughes affair, rumours of a leadership coup, and Damien O'Connor's criticism of the party's list selection process, acknowledged it had been "a couple of hard weeks in politics".



The poll questions 1000 voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 per cent.



Acknowledgements: Adam Bennett/ MSN News

PETE'S KIWI WATCH - My place to rant.

PETE'S KIWI WATCH - My place to rant.

Nats to reject any deal in Epsom: Mathew Hooton...

WEEKEND REVIEW: Matthew Hooton: Nats to reject Act deal in Epsom for this year's NZ elections



Rodney Hide :The greatest remaining risk to John Key’s re-election is his handling of Act in Epsom.



It’s been assumed that Rodney Hide holding Epsom for Act helps National. In fact, careful analysis of forecast party vote indicates that if Mr Hide wins Epsom, National will only be able to govern with coalition partners. If Act leaves Parliament, Mr Key and National will be able to govern alone.



Mr Hide’s situation is desperate. Polling suggests he would lose Epsom by as much as 30 points even if National stuck a blue rosette on Donald Duck. Further probing suggests that even if Mr Key instructed Epsom voters to back Mr Hide he may not prevail.



The only scenario pollsters have identified where Mr Hide might scrape in would be if National voters believed (a) that National couldn’t remain in government without Mr Hide and (b) that it would be certain to stay in government with him.



Most probably prompted by such data, Mr Hide and his Wellington aide Peter Keenan approached the Prime Minister’s office proposing that Mr Key interfere in the local National Party selection to impose a senior minister as candidate.



The idea was that the minister would have the reassurance of a high list ranking and would default the seat to Mr Hide. Trade minister Tim Groser’s name has emerged.



Impertinence

As well as being impertinent, the Hide/Keenan proposal is against National’s interests in every respect.



First, such a cynical deal would be an enormous boost to Labour’s themes of tails wagging dogs and secret far-right agendas. After the chicanery around Labour’s list, National would forgo the moral high ground.



The toxicity of Act’s brand is now such that National’s co-operation with it does not increase the overall centre-right vote but turns a greater number of centrist voters to Labour than Act brings to the table.



Second, a prime ministerial imposition of the Hide/Keenan deal would cause dissent in the Auckland National Party, where Mr Key needs every hand on deck.



In Epsom, party members want the right to choose their own candidate and have a local National MP, and a strong field of locals, including electorate chairman Aaron Bhatnagar, Parnell businessman Tom Bowden, former city councillor Paul Goldsmith, ex-UnitedFuture president Denise Krum, and long-serving party stalwart Scott Simpson, is emerging.



Even worse, were National to submit to the Hide/Keenan proposal, a general shuffling of National’s Auckland line up would be needed.



This would include crucial West Auckland seats such as New Lynn, where, ironically, Mr Groser has built up a strong personal following after beating Labour’s David Cunliffe for the 2008 election-night party vote.



The National Party and centre-right voters in New Lynn want Mr Groser back. They would be no more impressed than the people of Epsom in having an outsider imposed on them as part of a dodgy deal.



The third problem is that Mr Groser would probably win Epsom anyway. After living with Christine Fletcher and Richard Worth, and then suffering Mr Hide, Epsom people would relish the opportunity to have an MP of Mr Groser’s calibre. Labour, Green and other voters would also be told by their parties to tick Groser.



The Winston factor

These are only the start of the risks to National of the Hide/Keenan proposal.



Were it clear National was playing silly buggers in Epsom, Winston Peters would put his name forward.



With the media having already decided the general election is over, hordes of TV cameras and journalists would descend on the Hide/Groser/Peters circus.



Mr Peters would lose but winning would not be his intention. The publicity would push his party above 5% nationally and make a Labour/Green/NZ First/Maori Party/Harawira government feasible.



The Hide/Keenan proposal is the one thing that could make Phil Goff prime minister.



New right party

Wise heads in National are now preparing to give Act the bad news, with only one remaining argument in favour of capitulating to Mr Hide and Mr Keenan: that while such a deal might risk the 2011 election, National may need Act in 2014.



The opposite is true.



Act is so discredited as a serious political force that talks have been held about a credible new party on the right. The most important factor preventing it has been doubts that Mr Hide and his dwindling band would co-operate by folding Act’s remnants into a new structure.



Two parties to the right of National, competing for the same votes, would each doom the other.



Plan B is now in play. It involves Act being put out of its misery in 2011 so that a credible new party has three years to establish itself before 2014.

Acknowledgements: NBR on Mathew Hooton

Japan doing better in getting emergency housing for their homeless than New Zealand...

There seems to be more emphasis on opening up the CBD in the earthquake munted  New Zealand city of Christchurch than getting accomodation for the homeless people in the eastern suburbs - at least that is how many people out there think anyway.

Lets compare the earthquake and tsunami  affected areas and nuclear power radiation poisoned areas of Japan , and the situation in the damaged  NZ of Christchurch, in regards to supplying temporary housing for the homeless.

Japan should have 35 thousand homes available by the end of the month -  whereas the John Key National government is still at the tender process. When will NZ have housing available for the homeless there?  They may havee to spend most of the winter in their unheated garages and tents, perhaps?

New Zealand is not some over-populated asian country, but supposedly a first world country off Australia in the South Pacific. Could have fooled me!

Price on Marshall - a sneaky journo from a NZ Sunday paper...

Image via CrunchBase


Price on Marshall...

Lawyer Steven Price writes:

I have been contacted by a student at Victoria University who said he was approached by the Sunday Star-Times’ Jonathan Marshall at university last week, on the hunt for information about the 18-year-old at the centre of the Darren Hughes incident.

He said Marshall asked him to go to a university office and pretend to be a long-lost friend of the 18-year-old and ask for his class timetable. The student refused, saying this was a “morally bankrupt” thing to do, and good on him.

If true that would represent a new low in an already tarnished journalistic career. Marshall's style of tabloid journalism is the sort we associate with UK red-tops like The Sun. It's a style I don't particularly like.

Price continues:

I note the Press Council’s principle on subterfuge states:

The use of deceit and subterfuge can only be condoned in cases when the information sought is in the public interest and cannot be obtained by any other means.

I don’t think there can be much doubt that Marshall was trying to use deceit and subterfuge here, even if he was enlisting someone else to do the actual dirty work. Was it, then, really in the public interest? And mightn’t there be other ways of getting this information?

Price also reports that Marshall has denied engaging in any such activity, and that Marshall's editor is backing him up to the hilt. So whose version of events is true?

And why is the SST editor so confident there has been no wrongdoing? Has he spoken to the person who made the allegation?

Or is he just reflexively protecting his prized asset? Just as he weekly defends Michael Laws for writing indefensible hate-filled dross because it helps to sell papers?

True or false? Not surprising some would suggest.

Related articles

• Marshall enjoying VCU's run to Final Four (mlb.mlb.com)
• Marshall may face fines, suspension (3news.co.nz)

Did dear Hekia lie?

Image via Wikipedia

A dirty deal requires dirty lies - did dear Hekia lie?


They say you know your opponent’s stand is dishonourable when they resort to spreading lies and promoting falsehoods about your position.

The government’s Acting Energy and Resources Minister in attacks on opponents to deep sea oil drilling has been caught out lying and spreading slurs that misrepresented their position.

Gisborne District councillor Manu Caddie accused (Hekia Parata) of lying, or “deliberately misleading the public”, in an article in The Gisborne Herald on Saturday in which she said the exploration permit would involve only 2D and 3D data gathering, not drilling.

The company would decide whether to start drilling once they had all the information and, if they did decide to drill, they would have to apply for a mining permit, she said.

But Manu Caddie says this was a blatant lie.

The permit signed last year by her predecessor allowed the company to drill one exploratory well within 60 months of the commencement of the permit, he said in a written statement.

“There is no need for Petrobras to come back and ask the Government for another permit before they start drilling . . . the permit expressly gives permission to drill a well.”…

…Ms Parata also said there had been “scaremongering” going on that seismic monitoring could cause earthquakes.

That claim has been made numerous times by anti-drilling group Te Ahi Kaa in various media.

But Mr Caddie said this morning that the group had been misquoted.

“First they ignore you. Then they mock you. Then they attack you. And then you win.” – Ghandi

Acknowledgements: The Standard

The Government wants to emasculate the public service surely?

Image via Wikipedia
The NZ Government wants to emasculate the Public Service surely like they did the union movement in the 1990's?

The government is seriously rethinking the size and scope of the public service as it looks to reduce its squeeze on cash and return to surpluses in the next five years.

Finance Minister Bill English told the Institute of Public Administration New Zealand in Wellington the government has to cut back its role in the nation's economy and focus on what services it has to provide at the expense of less necessary spending.

Prime Minister John Key has already flagged spending cuts at the higher end of the Working for Families package in a bid to help contain the costs of last month's earthquake.

"This is not a time we can afford to indulge in a whole lot of 'nice-to-haves', even though, for sections of the population, they feel the loss of those services or funding streams," English said. "The government will continue to make decisions about what to stop increasing, scale back, or stop doing altogether."

New Zealand dodged a double-dip recession last year by a narrow margin, and last month's 6.3 magnitude earthquake has been called a "game-changer," forcing the government to cut all new spending initiatives, excluding health, education and justice, this year.


The International Monetary Fund is picking growth of just 1 per cent this calendar year, and the global body warned English last week to cut back on 'transfers' to the middle-classes.

English told the conference, the public sector "will be under constant pressure to deliver better services for little or no extra money," and the choke on new spending will effectively be permanent.

New Zealand's fiscal deficit is forecast to reach 9 per cent of gross domestic product as the government takes on more debt to drive Christchurch's rebuild, though it was already facing a structural deficit equal to some 5 per cent of the economy.

The government is looking at ways to integrate more agencies, and English said there will be more consolidation over the next two or three years.

That comes after the National Library and Archives New Zealand were wrapped into the Department of Internal Affairs, and the Food Safety Authority, Ministry of Fisheries and Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry were merged.

"Too many agencies in the wrong place risks diseconomies of scale, transactions costs, duplication of roles and back-office functions, and in some cases reduces the cohesion and quality of frontline services," he said. "The direction is likely to lead to fewer government agencies over time."

English said the public service has been too clunky in the past, and increasing contestability of its services will stoke its level of responsiveness and innovation to dealing with the public.

That will go hand-in-hand with the delivery of more services by non-government organisations, the private sector and iwi groups.

Back-office functions will be targeted for more cost cutting, with fewer people expected to take on more projects, he said. This comes after the government identified savings of $115 million over the next five years on joint procurement projects.

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• Infernal affairs: NZ govt sites attacked (go.theregister.com)
• Early attack brings NZ Internal Affairs site down (thenextweb.com)
• Raw Video Of Christchurch New Zealand Earthquake Devastation [Video] (realestateradiousa.com)
• (John)Key Notes 25 February 2011 (johndierckx.wordpress.com)
• No 'big bang' policies to tackle debt (nzherald.co.nz)
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• IMF Lowers New Zealand Growth Forecast (online.wsj.com)
• Borrowing soars as deficit tops $15 billion (nzherald.co.nz)