Electoral ads for your viewing pleasure.
Labour - let’s do this.
National - let’s get together Oh and Keep moving forwardcause the other lot are incompetent.
I haven’t seen what the Greens, NZ First or the others have done yet.
Clueless foreigner wonders: How do the smallish, rather nondescript “Party Vote” signs that I see around the streets get apportioned and located? They don’t have candidate names or pictures on them, but they look rather uniform so I presume somebody’s distributing them and erecting them in specific locations.
Probably just distributed to the party faithful and local branch meetings.
Meanwhile, Jacindamania has taken over and Labour has topped National in a poll for the first time since ages ago.. So much so that Bill English had to answer a brutal ‘Why are you losing?’ question in last night’s debate.
So early voting opened today, and Ardern gave a speech at my workplace so I got to see Jacindamania first hand!
It was kinda underwhelming actually.
Voting ends this Saturday NZ time. The polls are all over the place. The biggest scandal this week is the revelation that a National MP was a former Chinese Communist Party member and lecturer at on of their military universities.
Off to vote so time for a prediction. National 44 Labour 40 NZ First 7 Green 6 sundries 3. Winston to hold balance of power.
Bleargh. Winston Peters loves this kind of attention.
Huh. Labour - NZ First - Greens coalition. Be interesting to see Jacinda try and make that one work. Still, the Tauranga Bowls Club have spoken - seriously, who are these people?
I would’ve been okay either way. Jacinda is so very new to leading the Party, to then suddenly be PM maybe could’ve waited a term.
On the other hand, she seems to be a bold personality with charisma, something New Zealand hasn’t had pretty much since David Lange. Politics needs a kick, and why not give her that chance.
Well, Judith Collins is going to have the knives out for Bill English now: I don’t fancy his chances long as Opposition Leader.
How long does anyone think that the coalition involving both NZ First and the Greens can last? That seems to be a bit optimistic as a pairing.
My guess is that National didn’t offer as many minister posts to NZ First, and it’s totally a grab as much as we can while we can thing.
Story: The Guardian
I voted Labour, but this is just a ramshackle chimaera which will last just as long as Peters can still get his own way or isn’t feeling contrary or can bully James Shaw out of his lunch money, and Jacinda Ardern just isn’t an experienced enough operator to rein him in. I’d far rather have seen a more stolid National/NZ First coalition with Bill English as a safe pair of hands, giving Jacinda another three years as Opposition Leader to blood her a bit. This will be a mess.
The interesting thing about this is that the negotiation took a month, and could have taken more, and yet during the hiatus the governance of Kiwiland continued with nary a blip in caretaker mode.
By this stage certain republican models would have been in constitutional crisis and invoking the Supreme Court to resolve the matter.
Was there any substantive business that the government took during this period, presumably in consultation with LAB and NZ First?
No, it was pretty much caretaking, with no attempt at substantive change. I think National were assuming - as a lot of people were - that NZ First would form a government with them as a more natural fit {Peters has considerable history with the Nats, he is essentially a one man splinter party from them, a few decades back. Guy’s been around forever} - but even if they weren’t, I doubt the Nats would have tried to ram through unpopular legislation before the handover anyway. Politics here is pretty broadly consensus-based anyway, with, if we’re honest, not much to separate the Right and Left these days, and such a move would be deeply unpopular with the punters. Unlike, as you say, certain other republican constitutional models, the MMP system probably meshes quite well with the Kiwi appetite for fairness and compromise, and although National did still have a majority in the House until the new coalition was agreed on, any attempt to take advantage of that would see them hammered the next time round.
Interesting. The BBC news last night didn’t mention the presence of NZ First in the coalition. But then their news website groups NZ with Asia.
Yes, but wouldn’t that have required the GG to make the proclamation to summon parliament? And until there was somebody who could claim to hold the confidence of the house (which there wasn’t until Winston made his decision), I can’t see the basis for the GG to summon parliament.
Is there not a convention in New Zealand, as in other Westminster-style systems, that the sitting PM is presumed to have the confidence of the house until the house votes otherwise?
NZ First has always been key to the coalition, as they could have formed a working government with either of the two major parties: the Nats took the most seats outright, with 56, with Labour trailing on 46 {which was a vast improvement on the result they were facing with their previous leader, Andrew Little, whom Jacinda Ardern replaced mid-campaign: Labour would have been annihilated as a political force otherwise, and I’m not even a particular Jacinda fan}, but with 120 seats in Parliament there was no outright majority to govern for either.
The past few weeks have all been about which way NZ First would take their 9 seats: they could have taken National over the line, or together with the Greens’ 8 seats formed a government with Labour, which was the way they went. Peters and NZ First have always been the key to this election, but unfortunately he’s not a team player: he’s an excellent opposition politician, but he’s had nearly 40 years either with National or his own party to achieve something positive - he’s had his chance at coalition government before - and all he’s ever come up with is cheap bus passes for his elderly white cronies who form the core of his support.
He’s a wrecker, not a builder: I don’t think he’s actively malicious, although he blows the dog-whistle of race and immigration far too readily, but he loves the game of politics for its own sake at a time when we need somebody constructive who has something positive to contribute. Which is why while I usually vote Labour, I’d have preferred a solid National government to this sorry shambles: Bill English is at least a decent guy with the country’s interests at heart; Peters is going to squabble and split just because he can.
I’ll leave those more familiar with other Westminster-style systems to respond but in the Australian situation the question is moot. The previous parliament is dissolved. The PM and Cabinet at the time an election is called usually continues in their roles in caretaker mode until the new parliament sits. There is no parliament to consider either procedural or legislative motions and the election represents the most definitive
(and most commonplace) vote of confidence in the government.
Guidance on Caretaker Conventions 2016 [pdf]
In the 1975 Dismissal, Fraser as the appointed caretaker PM lost a vote of confidence on the floor of the HoR but did not resign because the election which that motion would have triggered had already been called (as per advise from High Court justice Mason)
I’m actually really happy here (since I’m on the left economically and conservative/reactionary on cultural issues including immigration), a Labour government in coalition with an anti-immigration party seems like the best of both worlds. Not happy it has to depend on Green outside support, but I guess there was no way around it.
I don’t really see how the Greens and NZ First are going to get along in a coalition though (though I realize the greens aren’t actually ‘in’ it).