liberation

MP conflicts of interest – their housing investments

John Key’s ‘blind’ trust is currently under intense scrutiny, and rightly so. The financial arrangements of politicians and political parties deserve being examined and analysed by civil society. And while the current ‘Highwater-gate’ scandal is still hard to fully comprehend (see the Standard for the best critiques, and see Tracey Watkins for the best defence of Key), it means that more and more questions are being raised about how the political establishment run both their and our financial affairs. Today, for instance, the National Business Review runs an insightful piece by Rob Hosking on conflicts of interest, using the example of the Clark Labour Government’s encouragement of a property boom, which furthered the financial interest of Labour MPs while putting housing out of reach of the less well off. [Read more below]

Key to Victory – John Pagani on the Progressives' 2008 campaign

Jim Anderton’s Progressive party has found that the more active candidates that it fields in elections, the lower its party vote is. That’s one of the lessons given by Anderton’s former spin doctor, John Pagani, in his chapter in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts. Pagani provides a fairly analytical and detailed account of the Progressive campaign, as well as a very strong criticism of the Electoral Commission’s role in policing the Electoral Finance Act. [Read more below]

Greens now favour 15% GST

The regressive GST increase being implemented by the National Government would not be reversed by a Green Party government. That’s the message found in the Greens’ new alternative budget released this week. Despite its posturing over issues of inequality the party’s pro-GST stance shows that the Greens are no enemy of inequality. The Green Party used to campaign on getting rid of GST. Now it accepts the increased 15% rate of GST, and doesn’t even advocate the mildly-leftwing demand of exempting food from the tax. [Read more below]

Key to Victory – Rahui Katene on the Maori Party's 2008 campaign

Rahui Katene’s account of the Maori Party’s 2008 election campaign is a rather insubstantial and slight chapter in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts. At only four pages long it’s the shortest in the book. And, sadly it’s not necessarily a case of ‘quality over quantity’ either – there’s little of interest or insight in Katene’s story. Instead of meaningfulness, there’s lots of vagueness, platitudes and wooly talk from the new MP. For example, she talks about how ‘The concept was that the Maori Party is the voice of the people, the face of the future. We listen to people’ (p.96). [Read more below]

Key to Victory – Damian Edwards on NZ First's 2008 campaign

New Zealand First’s electoral death was one of the major outcomes of the 2008 general election, yet we haven’t seen much analysis of why the party failed (although my attempt can be found here). The party itself is rather secretive and normally rather uncooperative with any such investigation by the media or academics. Partly making up for this lacunae is the very useful chapter by Damian Edwards (an ex-Ministerial Advisor to Winston Peters) on the party’s campaign in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts. We find out that the main causes of NZ First’s loss were the media and the Labour Party. And NZ First’s “save your grandma” campaign wasn’t successful enough to get the party over the 5% threshold. [Read more below]

Voter turnout and disillusionment in the UK election

The most bizarre thing about the recent British general election was how a campaign could be both fascinating and boring at the same time. There was definitely something interesting going on, partly due to the closeness of the race and partly just because it amounted to the end of an era in electoral politics. But it was also dreadfully dull – with the various political parties being more bland than ever, and the austere policies of Labour, Lib Dems and Tories converging into an unattractive centre. It’s not surprising therefore that despite the heightened public interest in the campaign, voter turnout didn’t improve much at all. In fact, the real winner of the campaign was “The Abstention Party” – due to the fact that more of the electorate choose not to vote than the numbers that voted Conservative. [Read more below]

Halfway through National’s term in office

The Sunday Star Times ran an article by Anthony Hubbard in the weekend about the state of the National Government which quoted me a bit – see Under-mining rich seam of popularity? (My comments also featured in an additional sidebar article which is not online, but is viewable on the right). In the blog post below I outline in further detail the analysis that I offered to the Sunday Star Times about National’s first year and half in office and about where it is going now. I argue that the National Government has been a relatively mild centre-right government so far, without any strong ideological momentum or sign of conviction. While it might not exactly be the friend of the working class, its also not the demonic, radical rightwing, reforming government that the left in New Zealand make the mistake of trying to portray it as. [Read more below]

Very few party donations declared for 2009

The Electoral Commission has just published details on its website of the political party declarations of donations received (over $10,000) for 2009. The most obvious observation to be made is the lack of donations declared – only $203,667 in total (which is common for post-election years like 2009). Many parties, including National, submitted ‘nil returns’, while those that did declare donations had very few, and very small donations. The Green Party declared the highest amount of money donated ($147,462 mostly from its MPs), followed by Act ($20,000 from ‘Virtual Bucket’ Ltd?), Progressives ($15,000 from Juken Nissho Ltd, ‘a Japanese owned forestry company operating in New Zealand’) the Maori Party ($11,142 from Pita Sharples), and the Labour Party ($10,063 from Phil Goff). These extremely low amounts reflect the fact that in New Zealand private donations to political parties make up only a small proportion of the overall funding that parties receive. Indirect state funding via parliamentary budgets make up the vast majority of funding. In fact, even in terms of these ‘private donations’ declared to the Electoral Commission, most of the money declared seems to come from MPs themselves, which is quite significant. Most parliamentary parties require their MPs to commit a small proportion of their extremely generous parliamentary salary to the party organisation – normally termed a ‘tithe’, akin to the money that churches require from their members. Essentially, parties like the Greens which demand a tithe of about 10% are able to convert yet another parliamentary-derived resource into state funding for their party organization. And this is why it’s particularly silly for so-called ‘political finance reformers’ to focus so much on regulating private money in politics. As I’ve argued before – see, for example, State funding of political parties is bad for democracy and Myth 14: State funding promotes democracy and strong parties – the current state funding has a much more negative influence on politics, making political parties much more ideological moderate, reliant on their leaders, less interested in recruiting members, and less likely to foster organic relationships with civil society. It means we end up with a ‘political class’ in Parliament that is addicted to state subsidies, building careers, and less interested in changing society in any significant way or offering voters any real choice between them.