Posts Tagged ‘New Zealand’

Last Day!

Well, I got nothing more to say. It will be a National victory without a doubt, but whether it can win more than half of the seats, is still hard to tell at this point. It will depend on weather, and the performance of Labour and Maori party in Maori seats.

For other minor parties,Greens will be the big winner, 7%+ of votes will get them a hell lot of seats, especially in an environment with strong major parties.  Other parties, except Maori, are all quite likely to become one man party after tomorrow - ACT has a better chance, so let's say two for ACT, but I still doubt whether there will be a seat for Sir Roger.

And I bet 10 bucks that we'll be waving hands to Winnie to say goodbye after tomorrow.

If that's not your style to say goodbye to a politician like him, let's do this to him together(Source, copyright status unknown, fair use apply.):

But seriously, he'll be sadly missed.  NZ First is the true centre part in New Zealand Politics, and Winston was a good politician as what I always say: "A good politician must be able to serve his/her electorates,  or at least to entertain them." Rodney's only able achieve latter, but Winnie can kind of do both(although I don't like his ideology and policies, especially on immigration).

That's about it, just don't forget to vote tomorrow. I guess Chinese must be the ethnic group with highest turnout - you don't get a chance like this to have a say back in China. I feel quite sad for people who don't bother to participate, they will only appreciate the value their votes if they fought for it hard.

For the next National government, the last thing I want to see the is the abolishment of MMP system - I explained this in my Chinese blog, but I just don't have time to write that much here, so just three words: checks and balances.

However the system will be challeged no matter who forms the government after tomorrow - National will call for a referendum, and there will be more questions on MMP if Labour gets to form the government with less votes.

Second debate

Last night’s leaders debate on TV 3 was quite dull – I nearly fall into sleep before they finish the debate. I don’t understand what’s the point for them to use that one hour to just list their policies, which they’ve done for many times during the campaign.  I wanted to get something new from the debate, and both of them disappointed me.

The only interesting thing happened was around the Anti-smacking Bill. Maybe it was so boring so that two leaders actually started to claim the credit for this very unpopular bill, instead of give the “credit” to the other party.  Well this reinforces what I said in my Chinese blog – if you want real change, don’t expect that from major parties.

It was so boring so I have to say that both of them did quite bad. In fact, I think the only winner of the debate, was John Campbell.

Despite others’ comments, I thought John Campbell did very well. The questions were succinct and right to the point.  And most important of all, he can control the debate far better than Mark Sainsbury, Helen Clark was unable to yell as she did in the first time, and asked for ”fairness” (when was the last time you see this?). Campbell did very well by given each other fair amount of time to respond to questions, and when someone is way off the topic, Campbell interjected very quickly.

I understand those who criticised Campbell do not like too many interjections in a debate, well, that’s really a matter of individual preferences, for me, I don't want to see two people just yell to each other without any form of mediation, in that situation nobody gets anything out of the debate.

John Campbell was the clear winner of the debate. I usually watch Close Up at 7, but I’ll sure consider Campbell live in the future.

For two party leaders, I think Helen Clark did better than John Key, compare with last debate on TV ONE. Key played it very safe, but lacked energy and motivation. Clark didn’t yell much this time, but was still fierce and energetic – well she had to hadn’t she?

Politician and politician ...

If we are here to talking about the format, I liked the "two johns" ad,  it's like a variation of National's 2005 red and blue billboards, simple, clear and precise.

But I just keep feeling creepy every time this ad appears on TV. Last line of the ad reads something like "...you know you can trust Helen Clark and Labour." I don't know whether it's just me feeling this way, is this some kind of brainwashing ad with a hidden subliminal message "you should trust Helen Clark"?

I mean the wording of the last line is bit strange. How come they know that I know Helen Clark is more trustworthy? It made me quite scared that they may possess some kind of mind reading secret technique.

But if not,  then don't tell me what I suppose to or not to know. I know (well, everybody knows) Auntie Clarkie signed paintings which were done by someone else.

"trust" and "politician" are just two very incompatible words and I think Clark is quite stupid to set the tone of the election in this way. The ad itself also played a very stupid logic game: any fully minded person should know that an "untrustworthy John" does not logically equal to the statement "Labour is trustworthy".

BTW ... here's a story about two Helens ...

A NZ political quiz

Pundit have published a nice online NZ political quiz that tells you which party shares most of your beliefs earlier today. It's quite short so should not take you long to do it, I just tried itself, and the result is quite similar to what I expected:

1. The Green Party - 73%
2. The Progressive Party - 73%
3. The Labour Party - 72%
4. The United Future Party - 70%
5. New Zealand First Party - 62%
6. The National Party - 55%
7. The Act Party - 35%

Except Rodney Hide's far right Act Party, I was quite amazed that the difference between National and Labour is just about 20% - I guess that's the down side of a short quiz - there's not enough questions to fully separate the beliefs held by each party.

But despite of that, the quiz also got an amazing level of details. It is capable to tell you the similarity between you and each political party for each issue, like this:

It's a nice quiz, recommended to everyone.

Just one quick point

Environment is an important issue to me. After seeing the debate tonight, I just got one question: "if we don't have an environment that is able to sustain our life, will we still be there to enjoy the economic development?"

New Zealanders are always proud of their progressive, sometimes radical social values. They are part of our nation's identity. We cannot compete in economy with countries like USA, but we can lead the world in social issues.

We did not seek a balance between rugby matches and our value, we also shouldn't do like what Mr Key said, "a balance between environment and economic development". Mr Key also should not be hesitate to answer the question on the 1981 Springboks tour, I agree the past has no value in order to help us solve our current issues, but Mr Key's personal values are  important though, for me, to assess whether he's the right man. His hesitation to answer that question, shows me that he got no social value at all - that was the defining moment of our country and yet you have no opinion on that?

For that reason, National is definitely off my list for now - if we lose our identity, New Zealand will no longer be New Zealand.

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In terms of the debate itself, both did fine. But clearly John Key is more energic and won the debate. After 9 years of Helen Clark, you can even tell what she's going to say before she actually says it.

And it's quite weird that John Key didn't mention the phrase "national party" a lot in the debate ...probably only once or twice.

A smart move

Auntie Helen has announced this afternoon that if reelected, her government will eventually make the student allowance universal by abolishing the parental income test in 2012. Before that, the threshold for receiving an allowance will rise each year to make more students eligible for student allowance.

Well sure this policy is not targeting at current university student like me, so I won't benefit much from it. The real target of this is the middle-class family: 40ish couple, with a bit of money but not too much, got a kid or two that is about to enter the university but don't want kids to ruin their life.

Middle class people do not form the stable vote base of neither major party, and they are the real king/queen makers of the election. People will eventually have children at a point of their life (well most of them), so a few bucks of tax cut sure is no match to Auntie Helen's big cash out bribes.

Just need to see how would the voters respond to this policy...

Although I will not benefit from it, it does, however make me swinging more toward Labour. I like left-wing more than right wing Nats - lefties usually tell public what they really think, wheres Nats tend to tell you what you like to hear - I cannot understand why National's cash dishing policy (tax cut) can be branded as "smart" "helpful to economy", but Labour's same type of policy is branded as "big election bribe". So why high income earner's spending can stimulate economy, but give more money for students' to spend is a bribe?

Some people are really  too greedy, 2% more of taxation in exchange for the cheaper labour and social stability, that's the best deal in the world. Most importantly, that 2% reduces the gap between the rich and poor,  prevent proletariat to become lumpenproletariat class (gosh, such a long word).