How can Labour win?

I've said it before and I`ll say it again: I give Labour no show in the next election. I'm pretty good at picking elections. I've covered at least three for the media. Last election I picked not only the date but the outcome, including the number of Maori Party seats. I also picked the number of Maori seats too :-).

How ever the lead up to the election is diferent. A year out there is a clear alternative at the same time that the Government is making more of a mess of things than they did before the last two, if not three elections. Labour does not have a clue what to do and the public is beginning to believe not only that, but believe that John Key, despite his lack of announced policies, may have more ideas and more vision - even if he doesn't. The only way Labour can possibly be in Government after the election is the demotion of the tired trio of Cullen, Maharey, and Hodgson from the front bench - replaced by Laban, Cunliffe and Jones along with a wider reshuffle.

Helen Clark won't do that. I would pick a National win, with the Greens getting over the 5%, UnitedFuture getting about the same as the Progressives and Destiny, NZ First and the Maori Party doing about the same or a little better as the last election and ACT doing a lot better.

Time for a change.Even if that change is more of the same with a little more vision before they conk out.

Labour is really desperate

After the strategy to attack John Key's addresses backfired, Labour was back for more today - this time about Key being in business with some people four years after they allegedly designed and built a leaky home.
Labour has lost the plot. You wonder what will happen next, as Colin Espiner says

What’s next? A breathless account about how Key failed to return his overdue books to the Christchurch Public Library in 1973? A thunderous denunciation of the National leader for failing to donate to a boy scout fundraising drive?

Labour’s strategy is clear enough - to make Key appear shifty and untruthful. But running a personal attack campaign is risky at the best of times, and usually only succeeds if public sympathy rests with the attacker, rather than the attacked.

(Labour) should get on with governing the country. That’s what Labour was elected to do - and the only thing that will give it any chance of doing again in 2008. Not making wet bus ticket attacks on Key, which only serve to underline just how serious a threat Labour believes he is.

reshuffling Labour

For those who don't know, the Herald's Audrey Young has a blog, as does Colin Espiner of the Press.

Young opines that Phil Goff should be the next finance minister, preferably before the next budget. This is what I said last month, but perhaps he should also be deputy leader now. Interestingly, last year David Farrar thought Maharey would win a deputy leadershp contest against Goff hands down. Wonder if he still thinks that after Maharey has made such a hash of things lately.

Young goes further and says Goff could be leader after Labour loses the election. I agree. It appears that Shane Jones and Maryan Street are heading for bigger things, despite both being list MPs. But our first lesbian deputy party leader?

Labour would have a much better chance of being in Government at the end of 2008 if Goff was leader and Jones were to be deputy sooner rather than later. I`d put Goff on Finance now. I`d also take Hodgson off Health - perhaps swapping jobs with Jim Anderton or even better, letting Damian O'Connor have a go at Health and pointing Hodgson to the backbenches where he can spin quietly. Also, later this year I`d put Annette King on Corrections, give Clayton Cosgrove the Police portfolio, Cullen can have Social Development and his other portfolios and Benson Pope can stick to this Environment portfolio and see who else he can fire from their jobs. He can have a few associate portfolios - like Associate Minister for both Archives NZ and the National Library. He`d be good at that. He`d get on well with Achives Minister Judith Tizard - he may even be allowed to carry her handbag.

I`d give Trevor Mallard Finance once Goff becomes leader. As for Jones, he could swap portfolios with Steve Maharey. Maharey can sit next to Hodgson in the back benches and say "f**k you" to anyone he likes without being noticed - that is, if he doesn`t want to be Massey Chancellor.

Helen Clark should resign from Parliament like Tony Blair did - and go to the UN.

Do this and Labour will coast through in 2008.

Redundancy: Labour's new tax cut

Proposed changes to redundancy laws may see redundancy payments being tax-free, as someone with a big redundancy payment that pushes them over the highest tax bracket cop a tax increase, even though they may be earning under the tax bracket both before and after the redundancy. People will be able to keep more of their redundancy to avoid " over-taxation".

In addition, what also happens when people get made redundant and they receive WFF, is that they have to pay a huge debt to IRD at the end of the financial year due to the increase in gross income - particularly if they get their redundancy payment close to the end of the financial year when it is too late to adjust WFF payments. Also, if they are in Kiwi Saver, up to 4 percent of redundancy payments will be directed to Kiwi Saver. So they won't get to keep too much more of their redundancy payments.

I would prefer redundancy payments to be taxed at the same rate as the income - particularly if these payments have an accumulated savings component. People don't usually ask to be made redundant, and if they have to repay WFF payments (on top of their tax return debt), they should be allowed to pay it off incrementally without penalty.

The Nasty Party

In 2004, the then-Chairperson of the British Conservatives, gave her party the unfathomably stupid label of The Nasty Party. In an address to the Conservative Conference, she said:

"Yes, we've made progress, but let's not kid ourselves. There's a way to go before we can return to government. There's a lot we need to do in this party of ours. Our base is too narrow and so, occasionally, are our sympathies, You know what some people call us: the nasty party," Mrs May told a stunned conference.

Now, I am not one to compare the New Zealand Labour Party to the British Conservatives. Far From it.Labour are liberal, not conservative. The kind of racist, bigoted, homophobic agendas that the British party has stood for over the years and the kinds of nasty, thuggish leaders they have entertained have not really been a feature of the Labour Party approach - well, apart fron the nasty, thuggish leader. Labour's problem has been an addiction to power, and a growing middle finger to the electorate.

Sometimes, however, a creepy liberalism does win its way through. And while people here will see Labour as the "nasty party" for all sorts of reasons, it is a definite brand weakness for Labour that they are seen as tough and uncaring and dont give a hoot about democracy. Apart from a few outstanding individuals like Taito Philip Field, who has bravely stood up to the more aggressive throwbacks that he shared his party with before he left, the general tone of Labour MPs in the smacking debate has been nothing but nasty, sinister, and a total disregard for the electorate, demoicracy andthe politicaol process.

They have chosen to utterly desert their new-found attachment to their suport base, and to gallop off into true Nasty Party territory. They are writing columns in GayNZ.com, supporting and funding the likes of the the AIDS Foundation, Family Planning Association, and groups such as Plunket, Barnardos, the Children's Commissioner and all sorts of other advocacy commissions like the Families Commission,not to mention their own Rainbow division, etc, all to make an hysterical nonsense of what is really quite a simple issue about banning smacking, while at the same time telling groups like Focus on the Family that Labour's extreme left wing views over ride any views of the majority.

Labour will come to regret this. They may remember that they won in 2005, at the end of the day, because they stole the election with taxpayers money and then changed the rules after the election to make it legal. They may remember it because they still havent paid the money back. They have given the big Steve Maharey "f*** you" to the electorate. Mainstream New Zealand is pretty mainstream these days. To line up with a bunch of regressive sexual deviants, Christian bashers, pinko lickspittles, Government-funded liars and and lesbian losers to lie to the public about an emotive issue and whip up totally underserved hysteria as well as whipping up their own caucus will fatally undermine democracy in this country until the next election.

So in a way the longer this Section 59 debate goes on the better. I want the queer community and the child advocacy groups who have their head in the sand trying to drum up a PR campaign because the Nasty party doesn't know how to - to be really, really clear that most of the Labour Party -- except their so-called conservatives who have been shut up by the whip -- have chosen to twist the truth seeking partisan gain, and have lined up with the dickheads of the loony secular and predominately childless left to mislead Kiwi families about a simple issue of public policy.

Every single meeting I go to in the 2008 campaign, I'll be raising this evidence of Labour showing its true face as the Nasty Party. I hope others do the same.

hat tip

The Government smacking bill

The Government didn't get urgency on the smacking bill as NZ First didn't support it. Now it is in the process of making the smacking bill a Government bill, which effectively it already was, and NZ First don't support that move, either. The move was so the bill can be removed from business by passed by Easter. Wouldn't it be ironic if "panty slut boy" David Benson- Pope fronts it.

The decision means that should Chester Borrow's amendment go through, Sue Bradford will not be able to withdraw the bill as it won't be her bill. But the reason I suspect the Government wants to grab hold of this bill is so that people will hopefully forget about it come the next election. But they wont forget about it because there will be a referendum.Also, the relationship Labour wants to have with the Greens takes priority to the relationship Labour has with NZ First - or even its own voters.

Voters in this country have just one effective say: at an election. Every other say - referendum, select committee, protesting etc is effectively ignored by this self-serving government.

Another thing, this bill is effectively not a repeal of section 59, although it effectively bans smacking. This bill is a substitution of section 59, which means the initial section is repealed and substituted with another one that pretty much means the same thing except that you cant use force for correcting your kids. Just like at the last election the Government got repealed and then substituted with another one which wasn't much different in substance.

Not a lot of people seem to have realised that S59 is being repealed and substituted, and the supporters of the bill focus on the repeal, and ignore the substitution. Thats because they don't want you to know that smacking will be effectively illegal (through the courts) even though it is currently an assault. Removing something that is effectively legal from our law and replacing it with something that takes away that legal effect, changes the law and makes something illegal that is now effectively legal.

The reason people oppose this bill is that they care more about the effect of the law than the letter of the law and the words of Helen Clark.

So to sum up, the bill effectively bans smacking, for some time was effectively a government bill, and makes something that is effectively legal effectively illegal - so it effectively bans smacking. Because it is effectively as simple as that, Labour is effectively lying to the public.

What this bill will do, though, is lose Labour the election next year, even if it is not passed. That will be the true repeal and substitution test, won't it?

Sunday Star Times publishes TV1 poll

Does anyone else think it is a bit strange that a television political poll paid for by the television station is publishedin the print mediabefore it is televised? Its not the first time it has happened either.

The SST has mentioned that the TV1 poll is to state that John Key is only five percentage points behind Helen Clark as favoured Prime Minister, but his party is seven percentage points ahead of Labour.

Key tastes victory as Labour limps

The Labour Party is having huge difficulty dealing with John Key. If it doesn't come up with an effective strategy to tackle him soon, it risks creating a sense of inevitability about a change of government next year, and then it's doomed.

Labour's performance last week can't have given its supporters much heart. Too many in its ranks see Key as having committed the ultimate sin of social mobility. Theoretically, this is what Labour is meant to stand for but, in practice, it is quite clear they hate him for it.

When Key first became nationally recognised in 2005, Michael Cullen's tactic was to kiss him to death, praising him for his integrity, life story and moderation.

But when Key proved he could better Cullen in any TV debate, the finance minister's veneer faded. Key became "adolescent", "silly" and "hysterical". By October last year, Cullen was labelling him a "working-class scab".

These extraordinarily nasty attacks on Key's background remain central to Labour's strategy.

Read the rest of this well-written article here

pay it back

Labour is raising money to pay back the money it should not have spend paying for the pledge cards... or so you thought. Apparently the money is being collected as a campaign war chest for the next election and the self-serving party has no intention of paying it back, if it can get out if it. The party is waiting on a legal challenge to the Auditor Generals ruling that it hopes will run past the 2008 election date.

They have half the money already. They should pay that back now.
UPDATE
Mike Williams doesn't want to pay it, but Helen Clark has changed his mind and say she wants it paid.So Williams has backtracked. Perhaps someone could ask Auntie Helen to pay back what they have got now.

UPDATE 2Tickets for the Fourth Annual Great Auckland Central Hero Debate go on sale today, and it is a fund raiser for the Labour party, perhaps to contribute to paying back the money. Auckland Central Labour MP Judith Tizard will present the debate, with three other MPs taking part.