liberation

[political finance] EPMU and Labour

A Labour Party-affiliated trade union, the EPMU, Is attempting to register as a ‘third party’ under the Electoral Finance Act (EFA), even though it isn’t required to and isn’t necessarily eligible to. This raises some interesting questions about the relationship between unions and the Labour Party, and about further problems with the EFA. [Read more below]

Why the Maori and National parties fit together

Most on the left struggle to see how the Maori and National parties could ever coalesce or even how the Maori Party could help National into power. ‘Surely the parties are mortal enemies?’ they say. This fails to understand the political nature of both parties. These two nationalist parties have much more in common than most realise, and this means that their current repositioning could yet yield a closer working relationship or even a coalition agreement – especially if a repeal of the Foreshore and Seabed Act is involved. [Read more below]

[who runs new zealand?] The Auckland ‘influentials’

The ‘greying establishment figures’ of Auckland are being superseded by a new generation of businesspeople, artists, politicians, journalists and sportspeople. This is the view of Metro magazine, which in 2007 attempted to identify who makes up the emerging influential set of Auckland. This blog post surveys the results of Metro’s roll-call of ‘Aucklanders in their 40s and younger who will make a difference in their fields over the next decade’. [Read more below]

NZ Socialist of the Year

North & South magazine has pronounced self-described ‘socialist’ and medical humanitarian Philip Bagshaw as their ‘New Zealander of the Year’. What’s going on? Has North & South had a leftwing turn? What has the relatively unknown radical Bagshaw done to deserve such high praise from the conservative media? And what does this award say about the state of Labour and National’s health ‘reforms’? [Read more below]

[political finance] Another example of backdoor state funding

Within Parliament it’s commonly known that the staff employed by the Parliamentary Service are routinely involved in carrying out party political work. This is one of the many ways in which the main political parties have managed to create an elaborate system of backdoor state funding. For many years all the parties in Parliament have operated in a cartel-like arrangement whereby none of them publicise the rule-breaking of the others. Over the last couple of years this arrangement has broken down, and in the weekend we saw the latest example: National released to the media an email sent last week by Tim Barnett’s Office Manager, Lynne Renouf. The email discussed the upcoming party selection for the South Dunedin electorate, and was according to the NZ Herald, ‘politically inflammatory’. The newspaper claimed in a story entitled Embarrassing public service email blunder, that  ‘The case has drawn accusations the public service has strayed from its strict obligation of neutrality.  As office manager for Barnett, Renouf is hired and paid for by Parliamentary Services and is not meant to be engaged in any overt political involvement’. Renouf was previous an electorate office worker for 15 years for ex-Mana MP Graham Kelly.

National’s U-turns; Labour’s disorientation

There’s no doubt that National’s latest announcement that it’s adopting Labour’s interest-free student loans is a policy U-turn. In fact it’s just one more chapter in a whole series of U-turns. National’s been ‘swallowing dead rats’ for the last few years on: KiwiSaver, Working for Families, industrial relations, Treaty claims, retention of the Maori Seats (in the short-term), anti-nuclear policy, non-market rents, the Cullen Superannuation Fund, four weeks annual leave, among others. Meanwhile, Labour and its partisan bloggers don’t know how to deal with National’s shift to the centre. [Read more below]