Hamish Walker's seppuku is the sort of scandal that political nerds love. It started off with criticism of one party, then blew up in another's face. And then it involved characters from a previous series.
I don't want to canvas what he's done - 2020-07-07 22:50:15 +0000 UTC View Post
The last reputable poll we had before we went into lockdown was on 1 News in mid February. In it National was on 46 points and Labour was on 41. NZFirst on 3.3, the Greens on 5 and ACT on 1.7
Then COVID happened.
Both television networks waited until after ...
2020-07-05 05:55:54 +0000 UTC View Post
Predictably, the National Party response to the Green Party policy launched today has been scare mongering bollocks.
In the release from National's finance spokesperson, Paul Goldsmith, above, he...
The Green Party has today launched the first bold policy of the 2020 election campaign.
The guaranteed minimum income policy is a well thought-out and sensible idea. It effectively sets the benefit rate at $325 a week, which is a wee bit more than the minimum recommended by the Welfare Expert ...
Over the coming weeks I plan on writing a column setting out how I would design an election campaign for each party (that is currently in Parliament).
This first one is the Green Party.
Current status: They'll be getting a bit nervous in Green Party HQ. The party has ...
2020-06-21 01:02:05 +0000 UTC View PostThis has not been a good week for politicians. If you take Sunday as your starting day for weeks, like so many calendars do, then you start with Todd Muller's speech.
He did it in front of an upside down Tino Rangatiratanga flag and flubbed that he'd joined Labour. Sadly for Todd these were...
2020-06-17 23:05:45 +0000 UTC View PostIt's been a curious strategy that team Muller has been taking in terms of getting New Zealand familiar with the would-be Prime Minister.
On his opening day as leader he made a passably acceptable speech and was asked about his relative anonymity. He said that he hoped he'd be on the news th...
2020-06-12 03:48:34 +0000 UTC View PostNational Party supporters can breathe a sigh of relief. They no longer have the dreaded 2 in the front of their polling numbers according to a leaked internal poll from Labour. It's a 3. Followed by a 0.
Yes in a polling period that only started from when Muller took over, he's taken ...
2020-06-04 21:07:51 +0000 UTC View PostThe United States is burning. This seems to represent a touchpoint of race and class warfare. Triggered by yet another senseless murder of a black man - George Floyd - by police, following hot on the heels of a no-knock raid in Kentucky that saw Breonna Taylor murdered by police and her boyfriend...
2020-06-01 01:11:17 +0000 UTC View PostWhen Boris Johnson became Prime Minister, he soon realised it wasn't going to be as easy as he thought. There was a vote in the Commons about whether the UK could crash out of Europe without a deal. Boris did not win. "2020-05-30 03:41:43 +0000 UTC View Post
Todd Muller knifed Simon Bridges just three days ago now, but in that time we've had an opportunity to get some early impressions.
His speech announcing his own leadership was fine without being startling. It had all the hallmarks of a traditional National Party leader's speech. I think we'...
2020-05-24 05:30:31 +0000 UTC View PostI have nothing to say on that, other than I hope the Greens go higher.
That poll speaks for itself.
Todd Muller may be safe, but he's not got any kind of X Factor to see National to a respectable total. I doubt there will be any Mullermania.
The only wildcard left is what Pa...
One of the columns I wanted to write when I still wrote for the Herald was a piece on the rising Christian fundamentalism within National. I never got around to it as it was never that relevant, however it's become super relevant.
The leadership speculation has obviously been at feverpitch...
Like...we knew it would be bad. But whew. That poll is real bad.
Obviously there's incumbency advantage going on. When there's a disaster, people rally around the leadership if they're seen to be handling the disaster well. So that would explain a large part of the surge. But also Simon is ...
2020-05-18 07:33:47 +0000 UTC View PostHeading into Simon Bridges' response to the budget, it was make or break. Both leader aspirants - Judith Collins and Todd Muller - had made it very clear that his budget response speech could be the end of him.
When he got up to make his speech it was clear he was nervous, so I think Simon kne...
We could have had transformational change. Instead we got a fairly traditional Labour budget, just with added zeroes.
In hindsight it seems obvious they would never do anything radical. Not in an election year. Not without having campaigned on it. Not with a coalition partner like NZ First....
2020-05-14 06:22:48 +0000 UTC View PostA week and a half ago (or 9 years in COVID time), the Government passed a bill it didn't mean to. It passed a bill enabling Inland Revenue to issue billions of dollars in loans to small businesses, bypassing the banks who, lets face it, are banks and will always be massive bankers.
Jené...
Yesterday during Post Cab the Prime Minister tried to temper expectations of a massive spending lolly-scramble of a budget. She said "I need to warn you, this budget will see us continue our careful approach to the books".
Fuck your careful approach to the books. The whole world's economy is s...
Following on my fellow patreon creator Liam Hehir, I will be doing a brief Q&A based off questions from you, my patrons!
At 7pm tonight after I've put Greta to bed I'll answer the questions that you post bel...
2020-05-03 01:59:53 +0000 UTC View PostThe latest disaster poll for National to emerge is a UMR poll which puts them at 29 per cent.
It had Labour at 55, NZFirst at 6, the Greens at 5 and ACT at 3 per cent.
O...
2020-05-01 01:44:23 +0000 UTC View PostThe National Party has a new refrain. "Let's get New Zealand working again." In his Ministerial Speech in parliament yesterday, Simon Bridges said a variation of it five times.
Finance Spokesman Paul Goldsmith even 2020-04-28 22:31:40 +0000 UTC View Post
There are not many governments that get the chance to redesign an economy from almost the ground up. While our entire system of wellbeing has not been burnt to the ground by the COVID-19 pandemic, it sure as hell taken a beating.
This presents Grant Robertson with a chance to make his mark on ...
There are credible rumours coming out of team National tonight that a ticket with Paula Bennett and Mark Mitchell is doing the numbers on a potential leadership coup.
This particular pairing has been talked about for a long time. Previous incarnations have had Mitchell, the former cop and m...
2020-04-21 07:26:23 +0000 UTC View PostIf I turned my column over to other writers every now and again (obviously paid them), would you be cool with that?
2020-04-19 21:12:26 +0000 UTC View Post
In an earlier post I talked about a Curia Poll I was given access to that had Labour on 49 and National 31.
Obviously the context is important, and that context is that we're in the middle of a natio...
2020-04-18 22:51:45 +0000 UTC View PostDo you want more "insider goss", or a higher level lefty think piece?
2020-04-18 01:30:37 +0000 UTC View PostPolls are a snapshot in time. One poll is pretty unhelpful, you need multiple polls to get a trend. Internal polls are also notoriously unreliable. I've been leaked several of Labour's internal polling but that's usually when it suits Labour.
This time I was given the (alleged) poll results of...
The Herald is reporting on a briefing done by former Finance/Prime Minister Sir Bill English.
Sir Bill is a strategic advisor to Jarden, a wealth management firm. He gave a presentation on the implications of the Covid-19 outbreak on the world's finance markets.
Bill made the fo...
2020-04-11 01:29:07 +0000 UTC View PostIt's week three of the lockdown and people in New Zealand are looking towards a post-lockdown world, while politicans fret over polling.
For many that means thinking about what sort of income - if any - they'll be able to get. For politicians it means an election that is coming their way fa...
2020-04-10 03:42:36 +0000 UTC View Post