In other news, I decided how I’m voting a couple of days ago. I have only the vaguest ideas whats going on in the campaigning at the moment because I haven’t seen the news since last weekend.
I was going to mock national for not putting a defence policy on their site but sadly they posted one so I can’t. It consists of replacing the Unimogs. ACT wants to triple the size of the NZDF for some reason. The greens will prioritise army reserve and “Investigate the development of civilian based defence where some citizens are trained to resist aggression or usurpation by withholding cooperation and by active non-cooperation rather than military force.”
National has a rebuild christchurch policy. No one else is going to bother by the looks of things. (Must be going for the Auckland vote.)
Labour has a policy on racing. AFAICT the policy is to continue to allow racing to exist. Similarly, National will continue to allow women to exist.
National will spend $300 million on [del]traffic cops[/del] “on road policing”. Surprised they haven’t put that on at the forefront.
The Mana Party will close all coal mines over the next 20 years. And “Protect New Zealanders’ rights to save heritage seeds and exchange food.”
The Conservative party will raise the drinking age to 21.
The Greens will ban the sale of fizzy drinks in schools, and have a maximum class size of 20
The ALCP will apply the consumer protection act to Marijuana and uses software called joomla to power their site. That’s about all the content on their site. Oh, and according to the Dim-post Blog Lisiate linked they support STV.(the ‘7200 seconds of democracy’ article was hilarious.)
So, you tell us you have a made a decision but wont say what the decision is.
In other news, who’d have thought an apparently innocent cup of tea could scupper the Natzis free ride to the beehive? Hopefully things will be alot closer than polls predict.
Damn right! secret ballot and all that! However you may like to know that in my first election,I got into the booth, and had an attack of SDVCF (Sudden debillitating voter cold feet) and voted for someone who didn’t matter. Thats right. I voted for united future
Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever communicated with one of the 0.7%. Was it Dunne’s hair that swayed you?
Clearly you’ll be voting for ACT this time around so our mighty military forces can take over the West Island, aided by our huindreds of thousands of fifth columnists already in place. Bondi and Surfer’s will be ours within hours.
No, obviously he’s voting for the Mana Party because Hone is just as rational and reliable this election as Peter Dunne was with the worm turning ‘common sense’ platform.
Thankfully there’s no one in the office right now cause im turning red…
In the words of James Thurber I didn’t want to vote in someone who would try and “out-Stalin Stalin.” Since PD was apparently inert, it was a safe choice. (And did anything bad happen? No.)
Take it as a sign of just how uninformed I was (That morning my mum said ‘Are you going to vote?’ ‘What, there’s an election today?’) I’d like to say that I was drunk at the time but it was a sunday? morning so I probably wasn’t.
And the rationality of Hawawera did sway me for a time but I think his Maori language policy is too soft. “…nation in which 100% of all New Zealanders can hold a conversation in Te Reo Māori by 2040?” Why not a thesis presentation? And why not by 2015?
Hell yes, Mana would wipe out unemployment as everyone is forcibly enrolled in Maori language courses!
Don’t feel too bad about your voting history Jaguars!. My first vote went to ACT. Every time I hear someone advocating lowering the voting age I think back to that with a terrible shudder.
No real news on the election front, we seem to be sleepwalking to a National victory. Time to start digging under the couch cushions to round up some spare change to buy a chunk of the power companies I reckon…
The government has tied up the major TV stations in court cases (not that there’s any untoward reason for that!) until well after the elections. They’re refusing to release important information on one of their main election platforms and it seems there’s been some major mismanagement with mining safety standards that directly caused the deaths of 29 miners and the handling of the Christchurch rebuild.
But John Key smiles and says “Aw yeah, well, that’s one way of looking at it.” or throws a tanty and walks out of interviews - and their polls go up one more notch!
…the TV One debate is not as bad as last time: but it is still pretty bad. At least they got rid of those ridiculous talking heads: but Guy is being so weak: especially on Key, that it is disgraceful. Let them answer the questions Guy, stop “moving them on”, and if they are not going to answer your question then don’t let them get away with it.
The Worm is stupid: but at least John Campbell let them talk. Our “state broadcaster” has let the side down again…
It’ll be damn close. The poll aggregates on this wikipedia page currently have national at 52% give or take 2 %*. However, we’re likely to see an overhang in the House again. So a straight 50% National vote might not be enough to secure a one party government. Depending on how the overhang plays out National might need as many as 65 seats to govern alone - (about 54% by my rough calculation).
*This isn’t the margin of error for the individual polls, it’s the variance between the polls used to get the aggregate total.
Re Media coverage; I’ve completely ignored the TV ‘coverage’ over the past week. The papers aren’t much better and even the radio has been pretty dismal. Morning Report did have a nice group brawl amongst the minor party leaders this morning. My highlights:
[ul]
[li]Everybody hates Act, I almost felt sorry for poor old Don as they all ganged up on him.[/li][li]Winston hates Dunne, and seems confident to break the threshold.[/li][li]Hone wants to focus on child poverty rather than exports and is starting to sound more and more like a generally socialist alternative rather than a fringe Maori radical.[/li][li]Pita’s far too polite to be a politician, and his list of Maori party achievemnets in government was pretty pathetic.[/li][li]Russel’s pretty stoked to be the only minor party sleader sitting above 5%.[/li][/ul]
Left wing parties invariably under perform in pre-election polls. Generally the polls predicted a National win in 2005, only to see Labour sneak in at the last minute. However, this time the gap is too wide. So while I see Labour performing better than polls predict, it wont be enough to seize power - unless the Greens, Maori party and Winston unite with Labour to push the Natzis into second place. Its a long shot and there’d be an outcry if the largest party was shut-out of government.
Don’t know, my *personal *budget on the other hand…
Actually, were’ running a mutli-million dollar referendum this year on top of the election, plus there have been some costly court cases and by-elections (sometimes resulting from the court cases) and a few national disasters. If the cost of two or three million stickers could have paid for one more mine inspector - even part-time, then they cost too bloody much.
Well Winston’s roaring back into Parliament and bringing 7 or 8 MPs with him. The Greens are over 10% and National look like getting just over 50% of the vote but missing out on an absolute majority due to the overhang. Labour looks like getting the lowest vote in their history, losing at least 10 MPS.
Harawira, Dunne and Banks get to sit on their own.
Greens have done pretty well, I feel sorry for the maori party having their vote split by the Mana Party.
Meanwhile, the Labour party must just about be at their absolute nadir. Apart from Goff, who is still there from the old government? It would be a good time for new Labour MPs - There will surely soon be room at the top.
Just saw a speech from hipster Banks claiming a ‘seachange’ landslide victory - yeah, by less than 1000 votes.
Goff’s doing a pretty good concession speech now. I think Labour’s main problme that there were too many of the old names left, Goff, King, Street, Dyson and co carry all the baggage from the Clark years, and the party paid for it.
Oh and what is it with politicians named Winston coming back from the cold? Awful thought - at 66 Peters is about the same age Churchill was when he was called up by Parliament to face the Nazis in 1940. Hmmm.
