2011 New Zealand General Election

Politics & Elections
21

Well, he’s not going for an electorate seat, because he knows he wouldn’t get it. But, as the pundits all say, you can never write him off completely.

Asset sales is a biggie. The incumbents (National) want to sell up to 49% of some state owned enterprises, the major opposition (Labour) are publicising the fact that the Nats have included the maximum sales income into their budgets without reducing the dividends received.

Labour wants to set in place an incremental increase for the retirement age, eventually ending up at 67 years instead of 65, telegraphing a move that won’t begin until 2020. The Nats are saying they won’t increase it (this term). Labs also want to introduce Capital Gains tax, but this doesn’t seem to be getting as much attention as it deserves.

Nats want to sell stuff, Labs want to do some short term borrowing both estimate the budget will be back in black by 2014 (just in time for the next election).

Then there’s the usual; jobs, welfare, infrastructure, environment all getting a look in.

22

You also have the 1999 election. The All Blacks lost and National got voted out of office.

23

…I am fast becoming disillusioned with the media in this country: the coverage of this years election has been a disgrace.

The TV 1 debate between John Key and Phil Goff was an absolute joke: with the constant cuts to the “political commentators” (should have read partisan hacks), cutting them off when they were getting interesting and asking stupid questions. Then we have the astonishing decision to use National Party colours for their election logo.

Yesterday this was published in the Herald. I was at the Green Party launch: not as a supporter, but as afreelance photographer. This was not a vitriolic speech: and to call it that in an insult to vitriol. The media have the ability to frame the debate with just a few words, a changed camera angle and the repetition of a meme. Its a responsibility that IMHO they are taking too lightly: they should report the story, not become the story, or try to shape it.

24

True that, although 1987 remains the only other example of an All Blacks world cup win…

I doubt it, he’s been out of Parliament since 2008 and yet NZ First still manages the fourth highest numbers in the most recent polls I’ve seen. Admittedly they’re only at around 2% though. Personally I won’t count Winston out till he’s shuffled off this mortal coil.

As an aside does anyone know of a decent polling blog for the NZ elections? Something like the excellent 538 would be awesome.

maggenpye’s pretty much summed it up. Economic matters in general seem to be the biggest issue.

National want to stand on their mad economic management skillz (despite being the worst performing government in at least 50 years). Labour are frantically arguing that hocking-off all the remaining state-owned enterprises (power generators and the like) is a short sighted move at best that won’t change anything structural.

The minors
Looking at the Greens policy through the link provided by Jaguars! it seems that they’re pretty similar to Labour on the taxation and no asset sales points.

The Maori party propose to make the first $25,000 of individual income tax free (the Greens advocate just the first $10,000).

The Mana party says I should update my browser, but then advocate a full employment policy, with an increased minimum wage and the abolition of GST. This will be funded by a ‘Hone Heke’ tax on all financial transactions.

Act want to sell all state assets, and cap government spending at 29% of GDP. Oh and we should mine wherever we want.

New Zealand First want to ban all foreign ownership of NZ land and simplify the tax system.

I didn’t bother with reading Peter Dunn’s policies.

25

Bit late to the party, ain’t ya? Or do you think the media coverage of previous elections to be superior? I honestly can’t see why you would.

All televised political debates tend to be ‘jokes’ - nobody expects to hear sound, logical arguments from political adversaries in a television environment. With that in mind, I thought Goff had a little more substance than Key, who played to his strengths as the smiling assassin.

Not sure what you are saying here - are you including Robyn Malcolm as part of the media?

26

Oh hell yes, I’ve basically limited myself to National Radio and blogs I like during this campaign, for blood pressure reasons. And are you really surprised about the Herald’s coverage? I thought everyone knew that they’re basically part of the National party (not that the Dominion Post’s any different).

27

I actually do think that the coverage has been worse this year: the TV networks aren’t even putting in an effort to appear impartial. I’ve seen good televised debates before, and I’ve seen bad ones as well, but the TV One Debate was a disgrace. Gordon Campbell says it best here:

…why on earth would you think I said that? The Herald writer called Robyn Malcolm’s speech vitriolic: I watched the speech and it most definitely wasn’t.

28

In the ACT (Australian Capital Territory - not to be confused with the NZ ACT party) we use Robson Rotation to counteract this. Different ballot papers have the candidates in different orders.

29

That’s a genius idea. Still, I can’t help thinking that we’d see a bunch of confused voters wondering why their ballots look different…

30

Yeah, NZ does its best to follow overseas tabloids (Perhaps they need to clarify the difference between ‘best practice’ and ‘most widespread practice’ ) Things were much better when Paul Holmes was around, Eh? :stuck_out_tongue:

I just spent an hour trying to work out how an STV election is counted. Its quite a complex undertaking, with ‘votes’ potentially transferring from person to person quite a bit. I guess the clue is in the name.

Anyway, my worked example fell apart when I transferred the excess votes from the frontrunner and found I hadn’t tracked where the frontrunner voters’ second preferences lay… …that’ll teach me for trying to be informed.

Anyway, If we did end up with that form of voting, do you think we would have to rank *all *candidates, or could we just put say 1, 2, 3 on a 10 person ballot and call it a day?

31

It depends on the system. We use STV for the Senate in Australian federal elections. Voters have to rank all candidates for their vote to be valid (although the vast majority of voters use a short-cut and let their preferred political party do the ranking for them).

We also use STV for the Legislative Council (upper house) in NSW state elections. There is a minimum number of preferences that voters have to indicate (from memory, I think it’s 15), but after that it’s optional for voters to indicate any further preferences. If, during the count, preferences beyond the 15th are required and a ballot paper does not display any, then it is “exhausted” and removed from the count.

From the information here it looks like the STV system proposed in New Zealand will require voters to mark only a first preference. They can do more if they want.

32

Aha. Ta muchly.

33

Best politico in the country.

Sorry bout that - I thought you weren’t [including Malcolm] but had to make sure.

34

See, this misses the hidden fun of STV … It’s the bastard you place last on your ballot, the political mud sucker that you can ensure has absolutely no chance whatsoever of getting your vote. The absolutely most undeserving. In extremis, the shadenfreuden of discovering your last preference was the first eliminated candidate in the distribution.

35

Yes, I agree. I enjoy doing that too.

36

Heh, that does sound fun. I often find myself a little sorry for the lowest polling candidates, particularly those who appear to have only been voted for by themselves and their Mums. Then I remind myself that they’re aspiring politicians and therefore almost certainly power-hungry monsters by definition.

37

I constructed this example for my brother-in-law at the last federal election in Australia. You may find it helpful:

38

Well you’ve just confirmed my bias against STV with this part of your explanation:

There’s no way in hell that the charming retired folks who act as as vote counters in New Zealand elections could cope with this.

39

The counters here manage to handle preference distributions quite easily for the single-member House of Representative seats where the Preferential Voting system is used and there is no need to calculate transfer values. I’m sure the NZ equivalents would cope too.

They don’t have to worry so much when it comes to the STV count for the Senate. Keep in mind that the vast bulk of voters (95% plus) vote “above the line” i.e. they mark only one square on the ballot paper and thus activate the preference sequence that their preferred political party has already pre-lodged with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC). These preference sequences are coded into the AEC’s computers and the count is done electronically.

The ballots of the obstinate 5% (amongst whom both **penultima thule **and I are numbered) are more complicated to deal with. I think they have to be entered into the computer manually. Make them earn their money, I say!

40

Well we’re now nine days out and the biggest election news is the unauthorised tape of John Key and John Banks having a cup of tea in front of the media. Here’s a transcript. Oh and I hope the electors in Epsom leave Banks hanging and thereby shut ACT out of Parliament.

Menawhile the polls seem fairly consistent. I think wikipedia’s pageis pretty good for this. Going by the graphical summary National seem steady on around 54%, Labout have been slipping to 28 % and the Greens slowly rising to about 11%. No other party is above 5%.