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NZ Politics Daily - 13 June 2013: Today's links

The main stories in New Zealand politics today are about GCSB/Prism, United Future, Peter Dunne, education, housing, SkyCity, the parliamentary privilege review, Maori politics, and police. [Read more below]

Listener 13 June 2013

Vote for Me (Part 1): The Green Party’s quest for success

The New Zealand Green Party has the potential to achieve unprecedented electoral success at the 2011 General Election. Over the last few years, the party has undergone a transformation that has seen them become increasingly pragmatic and mainstream. This reflects the Greens’ ambition to target a broader, more ‘suburban’ constituency. This blog post is the first of five, written by Niki Lomax, based on her recent University of Otago Politics Department Honour dissertation which discusses the path the Greens’ have taken to get to this point, focusing on what has made the Green Party successful and what barriers has it faced in its quest for success. An assessment of theoretical explanations for the success of green parties internationally, and in particular the examination of their unconventional political origins, ultimately shows that the key to explaining green success lies in their inherently contradictory reputation for being both insiders and outsiders simultaneously. The history of the Greens’ electoral success can clearly be tied to their ability, or indeed inability, to maintain an insider/outsider status. Leading up to the 2011 election, the Greens have demonstrated a skilful ability to balance this dichotomous reputation. This could see the party achieve a higher electoral result than ever before. However, this research suggests that in the long-term, the ability of the New Zealand Green Party to use their insider/outsider status to achieve electoral success is limited. [Read more below]

 

Election year – reinvigorated by the minor parties?

Suddenly we’re seeing a rather boring-looking election year spring into life. Until last week, we’ve had a relatively safe and slow moving government about to sleep walk to victory over a lame-duck Labour Party. But now the party system has been somewhat reinvigorated, and the contest might be a lot more interesting because there’s going to be some real policy disagreement, and some relatively dynamic debate being forced by these parties to the left and right of the big two giants (National and Labour). I was interviewed this morning on TVNZ Breakfast about this topic and about what the changes in the political landscape might mean for the referendum on MMP. The video of the interview is here, and it was also reported in a story entitled ‘Race row could escalate ahead of election’. This blog post elaborates on some of the points I made about the changes in the political landscape. [Read more below]

Who will dominate New Zealand politics in 2011?

Today the Herald on Sunday published my predictions of which politicos will dominate New Zealand politics in 2011. Putting aside the various party leaders who can be assumed to be constantly in the news and making a big impact, I gave the newspaper a list of five politicians and powerbrokers who, despite not necessarily being household names, will be extremely important in shaping how we think about parliamentary politics during the year: Steven Joyce, Hone Harawira, David Cunliffe, Guyon Espiner, and Kevin Taylor. You can see my explanations within the article Crystal ball gazing into 2011 on the Herald website, or else in the blog post below, which includes the full text that I submitted, along with some details of those ‘influentials’ that I considered but kept off the list. [Read more below]

 

A New Zealand First comeback?

There is a lot of talk in the media at the moment about a New Zealand First comeback. This is because some recent opinion polls have indicated that the party has public support in the range of 3-6%, suggesting that the party might make a return to Parliament in the 2011 general election, and thereby be a significant force in deciding whether Labour or National will get to lead the next government. But is there actually a political-electoral space for Peters and his party? Does anyone really want to buy what Winston Peters is selling? This is an open question, and so it’s anyone’s guess as to whether NZ First will be victorious in its quest to return to Parliament next year. The party will obviously need to cross the crucial 5% threshold to do so, but according to iPredict the party is currently predicted to win 5.0% of the party vote in next year’s election, although somewhat paradoxically, the iPredict market also currently says that there is only a 31% chance that Winston Peters will be back in Parliament (see here). This blog post discusses these issues and also reports on the state of New Zealand First with some information from a party insider. [Read more below]

 

Review of New Zealand politics in 2009

 

The year 2009 was a hectic one in New Zealand politics, partly because it was the first year of the new National Party Government’s term in office. At a general election in November of the previous year, National had ousted the Labour Party from its three-term tenure in office and formed a single-party minority government with support agreements with the Act Party, the Maori Party and United Future – all of whom gained ministerial roles outside the cabinet. In this first year, the new administration was both ideologically centrist and highly popular, being challenged only on difficult issues relating to the economic recession, political finance controversies over MPs’ expenses and various race relations questions. The following blog post examines these issues via a ‘Review of New Zealand politics in 2009’ which has just been published as a peer-reviewed journal article in the top political science periodical, the European Journal of Political Research (in the December 2010 edition). As well as looking at how the National Government fared in 2009, it also briefly analyses the main issues in politics (such as the economy, social issues, political finance scandals) and the changes in the other parliamentary political parties. [Read more below]

10 pertinent questions (and answers) about axing the MP international travel perk

With salary packages of between $180,000 and $500,000, New Zealand Members of Parliament currently earn more than 99% of their constituents. This gross economic inequality between voters and their representatives is due to a combination of factors, but mostly it reflects the belief of MPs that they are ‘professional politicians’ rather than ‘public servants’ and that they therefore should be compensated with a market-based remuneration in line with those in other professional careers.

A large part of their salary package comes from their many opaque allowances and expenses, which have been surreptitiously added to their incomes over recent decades. The holiday travel subsidy that MPs legislated for themselves – in which they have received up to 90% off international flights, and for which National MP Pansy Wong has just resigned her Cabinet post over – has been one of the most contentious, illogical and flagrant ways in which MPs have attempted to inflate their personal affluence. Yet with the mounting public awareness of the rorts and misuse of taxpayer-funded parliamentary resources, together with recent increasing awareness and concern about economic inequality in New Zealand, there has never been a better time for the public to demand the rollback of MP salaries and perks. And the abolition of the international holiday travel subsidy has been a good place to start, although the devil is very much in the detail of how the perk is axed and how these supposedly minor details are sorted out.

This blog post outlines why the perk had to be axed, but more importantly it highlights the many crucial issues that are involved in the process of reforming the MP perks system. It does so by putting forward “10 pertinent questions” that the public and politicians need to consider, and also attempts to provide some detailed answers to them. In brief, this extensive blog post argues for the holiday perk to be totally axed without compensation, exemptions, or bureaucratic reviews. Former MPs need to be stripped of their entitlement, no new travel scheme should be re-established to replace the rort being axed, and we should avoid falling for the populist proposal that so-called ‘independent bodies’ (such as the Remuneration Authority) should determine MP pay, allowances and perks. [Read more below]

 

Matt McCarten for Mana – the return of the left

Matt McCarten’s candidacy in the Mana by-election is one of the most promising developments on the New Zealand left for many years. Not only does this mean that the by-election just became much more interesting, McCarten’s campaign has much wider political ramifications – for example, it could be the launching pad for a new party to fill the gaping big hole on the left of the political spectrum in New Zealand. This blog post looks at why McCarten is standing in the election, whether he could actually win the seat, who might support him, and what it all means for Labour and the Greens. [Read more below]

 

David Garrett and politician behaviour

One of the key trends in modern parliamentary politics is a fixation with the personal behaviour of our politicians. Partly this is driven by the perception – which is largely-correct – that politicians are increasingly untrustworthy and self-serving. It’s certainly healthy to have some focus and scrutiny applied politician behaviour, and the growing public mistrust of MPs is also apt. Yet unfortunately a number of negative consequences also arise from this increasing obsession with the foibles, flaws and misdemeanours of political personalities. Not only does it perpetuate the transfer of attention from political substance to the superficial, it also creates a demand for greater state or parliamentary control, regulation or monitoring of the personal lives and backgrounds of public representatives (or candidates for office). This could have all sorts of democratically unhealthy ramifications – such as turning the political milieu into an even more narrower bunch of professional politicians with bland and conventional backgrounds. [Read more below]

 

Inequality in NZ: [1] Why economic inequality doesn’t matter

Issues of economic inequality have been absent from the parliamentary political system in recent years. Few political actors now raise questions about the distribution of material wealth. Quite simply, economic inequality does not matter in New Zealand politics. This reflects the general decline of the political left, and the defeat of ideologies and movements that are most associated with combating economic inequality. Class politics has been at a very low ebb in recent years, and the ideas of socialism, Marxism, egalitarianism, anti-capitalism have been largely discredited and out of fashion in both New Zealand politics and academia. The left itself – whose traditional raison d’être has been the struggle for greater economic equality – has been both marginalized and transformed into something other. In general the left in New Zealand – and elsewhere – has become less concerned with issues of economic inequality, and more concerned with other forms of social inequality and struggle, leaving a substantial lacunae in politics. The ‘old politics of equality’ has been superseded by ‘the new politics of equality’ which rejects the previous goal of economic egalitarianism in favour of an emphasis on anti-discrimination legislation and rights for identity groups. This might be termed the victory of ‘identity politics’ over class politics. Yet this situation is now changing in some key, albeit tentative, ways. A combination of factors, including the arrival of the worst economic recession since the 1930s and the unraveling of the identity politics project, has produced a small but significant revival of interest in issues of economic inequality in the last few years. Class politics is not yet re-emerged to structure or characterize New Zealand politics like it used to, but we can see the signs that it is at least partially alive, and therefore economic inequality may yet come to matter again in New Zealand politics. The blog post below is the first in the series of posts on inequality in New Zealand. The first four posts in this series are taken from a draft paper that I delivered to a interdisciplinary Workshop on Inequality at the University of Otago in June entitled ‘Why Economic Inequality Matters’. [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]

Key to Victory – The future of minor parties

Under MMP we supposedly have a multi-party system – with a plethora of minor parties giving colour and life to political debate. But the reality is that this image is more of a mirage. Our minor parties are the weakest they’ve been for decades, and it’s not clear that any of the them have an assured future in Parliament. These are the issues examined by Jennifer Curtin and Raymond Miller in their excellent chapter entitled ‘New Zealand’s party system: a multi-party mirage?’ in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 (edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts). This blog post highlights some of the most interesting points made by Curtin and Miller, including the suggestion of a more limited future for the smaller parties. [Read more below]

Key to Victory – Colin James on the 2008 election

Why was Labour turfed out of office in 2008? Colin James puts down the Government’s electoral decline to Labour’s ‘failure of political management’ in areas such as the Electoral Finance Act and the so-called anti-smacking bill, as well as generally being punished for pushing a heavy socially liberal agenda. Labour also lost the electoral fight to show that it was the toughest on law and order. James says that the victorious National Party got there due to John Key’s ‘bland leading the bland’ strategy, which now results in a managerial ‘government by MBA’. James writes about these issue and others in a chapter entitled ‘2008: The last baby-boomer election’ in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 (edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts). This blog post highlights some of the salient points made in this chapter. [Read more below]

Key to Victory – Jon Johansson on political change in the 2008 election

Although the 2008 New Zealand general election led to a change of government, it wasn’t exactly a big-change election. Rather than heralding a complete change of policy direction, the election mostly offered more of the same. These points are well made in a chapter entitled ‘Leadership during transition’ by Jon Johansson in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 (edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts). Johansson also looks at the question of ‘What drives political change in New Zealand?’ and whether there has been any sort of generational shift in political leadership. [Read more below]

Politicians should be paid to be representatives not careerists

Are New Zealand politicians overpaid? According to a new Massey University survey, Cabinet ministers are indeed grossly over-remunerated. Voters apparently think that ministers should be paid about $135,000 a year instead of receiving the $245,000+ salary they currently get. This blog post examines the detail of the survey, looks at some of the reasons that politicians are held in such low regard, and argues that MPs and ministers should only be paid the average wage. In effect serving in Parliament should be considered a representative honour and duty, not just a career, and therefore parliamentarians shouldn’t be treated as being above – and separate from – society via an extravagant pay packet and lifestyle. [Read more below]

Destiny Church’s Family Party splits up

Not only is the Destiny Church facing all sorts of internal ructions relating to its financial affairs and control, but the Christian political party that is an outgrowth of Brian Tamaki’s church - the Family Party - has just applied to cancel its registration with the Electoral Commission, and hence dissolve itself. The Family Party – one of three Christian-based parties that sought the party vote in the 2008 election – originally went under the name of 'Destiny New Zealand', until a major reconfiguration occurred prior to the 2008 general election. 

The Family party history

Centred on the evangelical and fundamentalist Destiny Church of televangelist, Brian Tamaki, the Family party was essentially a reconfigured and re-branded version of the Destiny New Zealand Christian political party that operated between 2003 and 2007. Tamaki and his church wound up the Destiny party in an attempt to create a larger Christian party that would incorporate the main Christian leaders from rival parties, including Gordon Copeland and Philip Field. Such a grand merger never eventuated, but the new party launched and registered in 2007, with Destiny Church’s Richard Lewis as leader and the deputy leadership taken by Paul Adams, a former United Future MP and pastor at the Pentecostal City Impact Church. The party concentrated its efforts on winning votes from Māori and Pacific voters, especially in South Auckland, but in the 2008 election won only 8,176 party votes (or 0.35 per cent of the total vote).

The deregistration process

The application to cancel the Family Party’s registration with the Electoral Commission is made under Part 4 of the Electoral Act 1993, and has been done so by the party’s secretary, Anne Williamson. The Electoral Commission says that anyone who wishes to comment on the application may do so by sending an email to email [email protected] by 5.00pm, Wednesday, 10 March 2010.

The Act Party – two factions fight for control

The Act Party’s divisions and future prospects are examined in Radio New Zealand National’s latest Focus on Politics programme by Catherine Hutton (which you can listen to or download here). I was interviewed for the programme, speaking about Act’s schisms and the recent damage to Act’s electoral brand. In the blog post below, I elaborate on what I spoke about on Focus on Politics. I argue that with the Act Party having now been in government for well over a year – a tumultuous year for the party – its annual conference is a chance for both party members and the leadership to draw up a balance sheet about Act’s successes and failures, to sort out the internal schisms that nearly split the party in 2009. Furthermore, the conference would allow the politicians to try and plot a way forward whereby the party might reverse its current popularity and credibility slump, but ultimately the future depends on who will triumph out of the two different factions in the Act – the pragmatists and the radicals. The history of another minor ‘flank’ party – the Alliance – also in coalition with a more conservative major party, is instructive in this regard. [Read more below]

Key to Victory – Therese Arseneau on National’s winning strategy

Was Labour’s election loss in 2008 a ‘benign dismissal’? Therese Arseneau is not so sure that it was. Certainly National’s 2008 win was the result of a much cleverer and pragmatic electoral strategy than in 2005. Furthermore, although not unexciting, the campaign was rather lackluster, without any significantly defining issues, polarisation or passion. This is what Arseneau writes about in her 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. [Read more below]

Key to victory – Levine and Roberts' new book

New Zealand’s preeminent psephologists – that is, political scientists that study and explain elections - Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts have just published their latest book, entitled Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008. This edited collection is their ‘eighth in a series of New Zealand post-election books that have followed on from conferences held shortly after each general election’. The book attempts, they say, to provide ‘an overall perspective of what occurred and why’. As well as editing the book, Levine and Roberts wrote two chapters and a preface, which are discussed in this blog post. This work explains some of the factors shaping voting behaviour, making use of a pre-election voter survey that they commissioned – which they’ve done in every election since 1984. The results show, for instance that the Greens were the least liked party in the 2008 election, and that Helen Clark was no match for John Key in what was a two-horse leadership race [Read more below]

Vowles on why National won the 2008 NZ general election

In the 2008 general election, half of voters (51%) thought there were only ‘minor differences’ between the parties during the campaign, while only 38% thought there were actually major differences between the parties. Furthermore, when survey respondents were asked to place the parties on the left-right spectrum, ‘A third could not place Labour or National’. These findings from the New Zealand Election Survey surely reflects the policy convergence of the parties, and are detailed in Jack Vowles’ new academic chapter about the election. Entitled ‘The 2008 Election: Why National Won’, Vowles’ chapter is in the just published fifth edition of New Zealand Government and Politics, edited by Raymond Miller. Vowles provides many other interesting statistics about voters and the parties. This blog post highlights some of these things. [Read more below]

Rebranding National – an academic view

How is it that a political party like National – deeply discredited by its extreme embrace of neoliberalism in the 1990s – could have so successfully found its way back into office last year? The answer is found in a recent conference paper given by André Broome of the University of Birmingham, entitled ‘Rebranding the Right? Political Baggage and the Redefinition of Party Identity’ [Download Broome]. Using the New Zealand National Party as a case study, Broome argues that rightwing parties rebrand to create distance from associations with previous – and unpopular – neoliberal terms in government. This excellent academic paper also explains why political marketing and branding have become such a central part of modern politics. It also argues that in countries like New Zealand, there is a very discernable shift towards policy convergence in elections, and a similar decline in the salience of left/right politics matched by an increase in postmaterialist competition. [Read more below]

The changing nature of ideological conflict in New Zealand electoral politics (1996-2008): The rush to the centre & the rise of post-materialist issues

To what extent does the left-right political dimension still structure political party competition in New Zealand politics? Where do the parties sit on that spectrum? What other political dimensions now underpin our electoral politics? This extensive blog post presents the findings of a regular survey of New Zealand political scientists about party ideological conflict that has been carried out for the three MMP general elections of 1996, 2002, and 2008. Explaining the results, and drawing on some previous blog posts, it argues that the left-right spectrum is of declining importance in New Zealand politics, and that ideological conflict is cohered to a greater degree by post-materialist issues. The major political parties in New Zealand now all agree on the basic post-Keynesian economic framework that dominates discourse and policy formation. No party fundamentally challenges the paradigm shift that occurred with the neoliberal revolution that occurred from 1984 onwards. All parties now agree, explicitly or implicitly, that the market is the best mechanism for generating wealth and distributing good and services. Within this ‘new policy consensus’ there is, of course, room for some limited discussion of when and where the state should intervene to correct market failure, but because there is essentially no debate of any substance around material/economic issues, what might be called ‘postmaterial issues’ now represent the arena for ideological and political conflict in parliamentary politics. Furthermore, within this post-reform era political conflict is underpinned by a strong pragmatism rather than principle. Some explanations are proposed for the rise of the new consensus, the decline of left-right conflict, and the increasing salience of societal issues in electoral competition. [Read more below]    

Conclusions about the 2008 election campaign

New Zealand’s fifth MMP general election in 2008 was, according to the main party slogans, a contest between ‘trust’ and ‘a brighter future’. It was also one of the least dynamic and policy-oriented in living memory. The highly-professionalized strategies meant that it was certainly no contest of ideas or broadly different political options for voters. Despite the usual electoral hyperbole, the programmatic differences were more blurred than ever. This was especially noticeable in economic policy, with seemingly interchangeable economic outlooks, and virtually no disagreement on what should be done about the developing economic recession. In the absence of any substantive differences in economics, and with few other issues resonating with the public, the campaign came down to a choice of leadership. This is the conclusion of my chapter entitled ‘Party Strategy and the 2008 Election’ which is part of the recently published book Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig). The blog post below reproduces the draft conclusion of my chapter. Subsequently the draft chapter was substantially reworked, edited, and condensed for the final book, so please see the published book for the final and ‘authoritative’ version. [Read more below]

The professionalisation of party campaigning

The 2008 general election campaign was both highly professionalized and bland. More than ever before, the New Zealand parties relied on professional campaign tactics and strategy, with the result that the campaign became highly meaningless for many voters, and because there was little to excite or enthuse the public, voter turnout was one of the lowest in over a hundred years. This is the overarching theme of my chapter entitled ‘Party Strategy and the 2008 Election’ which is part of the recently published book Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig). The blog post below reproduces the theory-based section of my draft chapter – which I subsequently cut out of the final version. This section explores the professionalisation of politics in New Zealand and how this is manifested in the electoral tactics and strategies of political parties. It argues that the modern professionalised nature of the political parties strongly influenced the dynamics of the 2008 campaign, the techniques utilized to sell the parties, and the ideological choices available to voters. [Read more below]

NZ First’s 2008 election campaign

Of all the parliamentary parties, New Zealand First’s 2008 election campaign was possibly the most impressive and successful. Obviously the party failed to make it back into Parliament, yet it only just missed out, managing to elevate its public support up from within the ‘margin of error’ of the opinion polls, to 4.1 per cent. The party obtained the fourth highest party vote, and was only denied representation in the new Parliament because of the exclusionary and undemocratic five per cent MMP threshold. New Zealand First actually won a greater proportion of the party vote than both the Act Party and the Maori Party (both of whom were allocated five seats each). Thus, by nearly making it back into Parliament, New Zealand First’s performance belied the projections of most political commentators. I look at the party’s strategy in the section on New Zealand First within my chapter entitled ‘Party Strategy and the 2008 Election’ which is part of the recently published book Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig). This blog post is the 10th of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book, and it constitutes the original draft section about New Zealand First that I wrote for my chapter. Subsequently this draft was substantially reworked, edited, and condensed for the final book, so please see the published book for the final and ‘authoritative’ version. [Read more below]

The Greens’ 2008 election campaign

In 2008 the Green Party was set to become the third largest party in Parliament. To get there the party attempted to take a qualitatively different approach to the past – adopting a highly professsionalised and market-oriented strategy. Taking the ‘Americanisation’ of politics towards its logical conclusion the Green also embraced a very celebrity-focused method of campaigning, while still relying on some traditional minor party media stunts. The party also attempted to break out of its ‘left ghetto’ but with mixed success. These are some of the issues that I focus on in the section on the Green Party within my chapter entitled ‘Party Strategy and the 2008 Election’ which is part of the recently published book Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig). This blog post is the ninth of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book, and it constitutes the original draft section about the Greens that I wrote for my chapter. Subsequently this draft was substantially reworked, edited, and condensed for the final book, so please see the published book for the final and ‘authoritative’ version. [Read more below]

Labour’s 2008 election campaign

The Labour Party’s 2008 general election campaign strategy had two main flaws: its decision to campaign on the theme of trust (together with a general negativity), and its management of coalition party possibilities. Not only did these strategies fail to fire during the campaign, but instead backfired, contributing to Labour’s failure to remain a truly competitive player in the election. These are the issues that I focus on in the section on the Labour Party within my chapter entitled ‘Party Strategy and the 2008 Election’ which is part of the recently published book Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig). This blog post is the eighth of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book, and it constitutes the original draft section about Labour that I wrote for my chapter. Subsequently this draft was substantially reworked, edited, and condensed for the final book, so please see the published book for the final and ‘authoritative’ version. [Read more below]

Leaders debates and interviews in the 2008 NZ election

Which of Labour and National instigated last years’ blocking of minor parties from the TV leaders election debates? The answer is in a chapter by Geoffrey Craig entitled ‘Leaders’ Debates and News Media Interviews’, which is in the recently published book Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig of the University of Otago Politics department). This blog post is the sixth of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book (which I also have a chapter in). Craig has put together a chapter that nicely chronicles the various debates that played a central role in the 2008 election campaign. [Read more below]

What’s left in 2009 in New Zealand?

In July I gave a talk to the Dunedin branch of Drinking Liberally on the topic of “What’s left in 2009 in New Zealand?” The rough notes I used for my talk are below (although I didn’t actually read the speech sentence-for-sentence, nor did I use every paragraph). It sparked off some very interesting discussion about the state of the left. Some of the main questions I was asking were:

• Is the left-right political spectrum still relevant to politics in New Zealand?
• What other spectrums are now useful for understanding politics?
• What is the difference between left-right and liberal-conservative in modern NZ politics?
• Why is politics increasingly based more around societal issues instead of economic ones? [Read more below]

Political advertising in the 2008 NZ election

Which political parties had the best advertising in the last year’s general election? How come the Greens’ had such good advertising but did relatively poorly? What was wrong with Labour’s advertising? What was right about National’s advertising strategy? Did New Zealand First lose representation because of, or despite of, its election advertising and strategy? Did the Electoral Finance Act properly define and understand what a political advertisement is? Claire Robinson answers these questions in her chapter entitled ‘”Vote for me”’: Political Advertising’, published in Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig of the University of Otago Politics department). This blog post is the fifth of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book (which I also have a chapter in). [Read more below]

‘A far-left social libertarian’

As someone who is highly interested in political ideology and ways of conceptualizing and explaining politics, I’m an enthusiast for the various online political ideological spectrum tests around. Although hardly perfect, they are useful mechanisms for helping us understand politics and comparative political issues – especially because they often allow for more complexity than just the simple – yet important – left-right dimension. I recently took the test at the gotoquiz.com’s Political Spectrum Quiz, and it turns out that I can be categorized as ‘a far-left social libertarian’ - Left: 7.7, Libertarian: 7.11. [Read more below]

[NewLabour Party history] 2: Theoretical background

The NewLabour Party (NLP) was a classic social democratic labour party aimed at the pursuit of working class orientated social change through the institution of parliamentary democracy. Although it was a reaction to another parliamentary party of the left moving significantly to the right, the NLP too provides evidence of the inability of social democratic parties to maintain their initial radicalism due to their subsequent need to moderate their policy and political strategy. The party therefore provides an interesting opportunity to examine party transformation in general. This second blog post in the series on the NLP’s short history in New Zealand politics – which contains research carried out on this political project back in 1995 - therefore attempts to discuss theory in relation to social democracy’s transformation and set up some sort of framework for understanding the NLP’s short history. [Read more below]

Review of New Zealand politics in 2008

Every year the European Journal of Political Research publishes a political date yearbook which gives a review of politics in a number of western countries. I contribute the section on New Zealand to the journal – last year’s publication on New Zealand politics in 2007 can be read here. Below is the first draft of my review of New Zealand politics in 2008. It still requires a bit of abridging and editing, and as always I’m interested in feedback and suggestions, which you can leave in the comments section or email me (edwards.bryceATgmail.com). [Read more below]

RAM – the minnow party implodes

One amusing theorem about minor parties says that ‘the intensity of party politics is in inverse proportion to the amount of power the party has achieved’. Well, the Residents Action Movement (RAM) party showed itself to be a great distance from power at the last general election when it won only 465 party votes (despite claiming a membership of 3000). And now the future of the fledgling party is up in the air, with the recent departure of some key activists and ongoing internal fights over the future of the party. [Read more below]

A future for New Zealand First?

The question of whether the New Zealand First party has a future is dealt with in a feature story by David Fisher in the latest Herald on Sunday. Entitled ‘Is he still the fairest?’, the story is not online (although the much shorter news version of it is). I was interviewed for the article, so I thought I’d briefly elaborate on my thoughts about the party’s future in a blog post and give further details of the Herald on Sunday feature. I argue that despite losing its parliamentary representation (due to the undemocratic 5% MMP threshold), NZ First actually had a reasonably impressive election campaign, but has no future.  [Read more below].

The minor parties are killing MMP

The minor parliamentary parties are killing support for MMP - that’s the impression I came away with after watching the TVNZ minor party leaders debate on Monday night. They’re killing us with boredom, consensus and sameness. Yet this should be the general election whereby the minor parties in Parliament get to shine by showing how different they are to the incredibly centrist and ‘me-too’ Labour and National parties. Surely there are millions of disaffected and unimpressed voters that are turned off the claustrophobic centrist new political consensus set up by Labour and National? But the tragedy is that all the minor parliamentary parties are infected by the same disease – they are falling over themselves to agree with one another and show how cooperative and clean they are. This isn’t useful in an election where the New Zealand public need a real choice between different political programmes rather than mere tinkering with the status quo. Part of the problem is that the current minor parties are atrophied leftovers from the 1990s.  We therefore need a shake up of the New Zealand party system and the introduction of some parties that offer real change. [Read more below]

Issues in New Zealand politics in 2007

It might seem a bit odd to have a blog post about issues in NZ politics in 2007. But every year the European Journal of Political Research publishes a yearbook looking at what’s happened in the previous year in politics of 20+ western democracies. For the past decade or so, this has been written by Jack Vowles, but this year I’ve given it a go because Prof Vowles is no longer in the country. And the latest Political Data Yearbook (Volume 47, Issue 7-8, 2008) has just been published. You can read this in university libraries, and some universities will have online access to it here. But for those that can’t, below is the text that I submitted to the yearbook.  Although it pertains to last year, hopefully what I’ve written is actually a useful context for understanding the current election campaign. The extensive analysis includes discussion of all the major issues from an action-packed policy year involving the ‘anti-smacking’ law, the Electoral Finance Act, extensions and enhancements to KiwiSaver and Working for Families, the terrorism raids, scandals about Air NZ in the middle east, employment and politicisation in the public service, and the charging of Labour MP Phillip Field with corruption and bribery. There was also the rise of John Key and the attempted revitalization of Labour. I argue that although it appears contradictory, political consensus and conflict increased in tandem during 2007. [Read more below]

[party membership] 31: Conclusions

The mass membership form of the political party is clearly extinct in New Zealand. It has been superseded by the electoral-professional form of party, which has the organisational characteristics of a low capacity for membership participation and a strong reliance on capital resources and party professionals. This series of blog posts has therefore emphasised one side of the transition to the electoral-professional form of party organisation: the decline in membership numbers. [Read more below]

[party membership] 30: Does it matter?

Whether parties should actually want to increase their memberships is an important question. For example, it might be asked if it is really such a bad thing that political parties no longer attract members for social entertainment reasons? Nowadays the parties only draw those who are genuinely interested in belonging to a party for political reasons. The reality is that having mass memberships meant that the extra-parliamentary parties risked being flabby and almost apolitical bodies that served no real purpose other than self-legitimisation. Also, the fact that very few New Zealanders now join any of the parties could be seen as a useful verdict from voters about the state of the political parties. It might suggest that the parties have a diminished legitimacy for New Zealanders. [Read more below]

[party membership] 29: Electronic advances

Political parties in New Zealand have been looking at ways to make the internet work for the organising of membership. This is still an evolution of organising in its infancy. [Read more below]

[party membership] 28: New roles for members, and party restructuring

If New Zealand political parties ever become serious about recruiting members again, they will need to re-examine the roles that they afford members, rather than just regarding them as cannon fodder. Alternatively, should the parties want to reconcile themselves with the reality of the new low-membership, low-participation environment, they will need to restructure their parties accordingly. [Read more below]

[party membership] 27: Alternatives to membership

If political parties are to increase public participation in them, it might not be via actual membership. Already many of the parties are attempting to recruit voters into the category of ‘supporter’. [Read more below]

[party membership] 26: MMP

Some commentators predicted that the introduction of MMP might reverse the decline in party membership numbers. It does not appear, however, that MMP’s promise has been delivered. [Read more below]

[party membership] 25: The decline of linkage between state and society

The shift in New Zealand towards the low-membership electoral-professional model of political parties has had particularly important consequences for the way that the public orientate towards the arena of state power. [Read more below]

[party membership] 24: Leading to an unrepresentative ‘political class’

There are fears that a declining membership base means that political parties are likely to become increasingly unrepresentative of New Zealand society. It can be argued that as membership declines, candidate selection is increasingly left in the hands of an unrepresentative slice of New Zealanders – or the ‘political class’. [Read more below]

[party membership] 23: Important consequences for party ideology

Parties in New Zealand have clearly demonstrated that they can exist more than adequately without mass memberships, but the existence of the low numbers still invites the question of how well the parties function with this new arrangement. For instance, the decline of the membership numbers of New Zealand’s political parties has some important consequences for party ideology. [Read more below]

[party membership] 22: Decline in democratic structures

Party membership is made even more meaningless by the lack of internal democracy in the New Zealand parties. Despite supposedly democratic structures, it is the parliamentary elite of the parties that make the most important decisions. [Read more below]

[party membership] 21: Professionalisation

Existing alongside the ‘diminishing supply’ explanations for the decline in party membership is an argument that highlights a ‘diminishing demand’ for membership on the part of party leaders. This is closely related to the shift of parties towards an electoral-professional form of organisation, which involves greater centralisation and professionalisation, all of which increasingly takes place in the parliamentary wing. In this situation, the benefits of a large membership are no longer so great, especially balanced against some of the political and financial costs that also accrue from membership. Party elites therefore have a reduced demand and capacity for involving a large membership, and subsequently expend less effort in recruiting and retaining members. [Read more below]

[party membership] 20: Alternative social activities

In recruiting members, parties face competition from alternative social activities. New Zealand political parties once fulfilled a non-political function that is now no longer required – entertainment. The huge growth in alternative social activities have reduced society’s supply of party membership. [Read more below]

[political party social bases] 21: Conclusions

This series of blog posts has detailed one way in which the New Zealand parties are becoming less connected with civil society. The social constituencies are clearly being detached from the parties. This is because of the declining influence of class (in particular) and social structure (more generally) in shaping voting behaviour. And while class has become less important in New Zealand party politics, it is significant that there has been no alternative social cleavage emerging to configure and shape the party system. In this environment the differences between parties have narrowed and the parties compete without any strong coherence. [Read more below]