The most powerful impact of the Memorandum of Understanding will come from the next set of Polls. Now the media are obliged to refer to the Green-Labour Bloc, voters get to see how close the two sides are in reality and that perception generates momentum.
What will be concerning National is the speed of the change of allegiance Labour managed in the latest Colmar Brunton Poll. It’s brought NZ First and Greens down to where their support base really is and it’s reset the political debate.
NZers have had polls presented like Sports results so the constant ‘National 48-Labour 30″ message is like month after month of your team losing.
Commentators will be arguing that this is meaningless because it’s the same sized pie split differently. While that’s true, the momentum and speed of that leap to Labour suggests a deeper tension at work. Those same commentators will argue Labour need to appeal to National Voters or end up dividing the numbers they already have without growing them.
I disagree.
Those voting National are the same middle class NZers who are now in billions of debt because of the Property bubble. They are so over leveraged they would vote National until the Ice Caps melt.
Appealling to them requires Labour to simply offer some protection on Family Homes when the bubble bursts.
What the momentum to Labour and presenting the Polls differently will do is draw those missing million back to the ballot box.
There is some suggestion that has already begun. The latest internal polling could be keeping David Farrar working double shifts to explain the free fall. The building frustration of the Opposition has finally found somewhere to rally to. National’s sky scraping highs are created in part by people not participating, I think voters coming off the fence are swelling Labour’s numbers and hurting National’s.
Martyn, if Labour is the left-wing champion that you in fanatically deluded fashion think it to be, why did Labour introduce Rogernomics, why did Clark not introduce a capital gains tax, and why did they sign a Free Slave Agreement with the world’s largest dictatorship? Labour is a centre-right party at best.
Jenny Shipley government was taken down by rising public concern about social issues. I was a young registered nurse back then and remember the battles with stupid policies like Shipley making hospitals charge sick people for staying in a bed overnight.
The social issue of concern of today is housing as Martin says. The left need a huge get out the vote campaign for the rental and homeless group. Due to transience, anomie, apathy, poverty and often youth this group is disconnected from political and social supports.
This group and fair minded kiwis need to vote for a massive building programme of good housing like their grandparents did when they voted for the first Labour government.
I want to pick up on one of your points, Martyn, about commentators claiming that it all means nothing but different sized slices of the same pie.
As the pie stands at the moment, this is largely true.
But what happens if we manage to make the pie bigger? and I mean what happens if we get the (estimated) one million missing voters out to vote on election day?
If we could do that, it would be a hell of a much bigger pie and that’s what National fears most – a high turnout because high turnouts don’t generally get a lot more National votes, but they usually get a lot more anti-National votes!
When the right puff and blow about how unimportant the figures are; they are trying to disguise their fear that this might start the rise of the formerly non-voting and politically ignorant into a movement for change.
No wonder National are scared, and their fear is graphically portrayed by the frightened squawks from Hosking, Henry, Garner and the rest of the media con artists.
if the MoU achieves little else, a more accurate msm presentation of the closeness of the balance of political forces will be most helpful for voter physcology
we almost need a “NZ Bernie”, not as saviour but as a spark, I nominate John Campbell! the MoU has shown some potential as a circuit breaker of the “Key Love” club, though as Martyn says the numbers committed to the housing cash cow need some way to climb down out of their denial without facing total ruin (at least for the family dwelling)–a massive house build along with rent control would go a long way to letting the bubble down more gently*, housing the homeless and creating paid work
* as tempting as it would be to see some of the selfish ‘neo rentier’ swine take a bath who have turned their backs on the rest while the Nats have turned this country into a tax haven and clearing house for foreign capital
Yeah Martyn it will show in the trend it is always a good indicator.
I don’t trust the corporate polls we get shoved down our throats every month by Nat sympathisers , not one is unbiased its the internal party survey from Lab/Green that would be good to see or maybe Waatea Fifth estate could provide a real scientific alternative in the run up to next year’s General Election funds permmiting .
With the MOA it will finally be a real contest and wipe smiles from the usual suspects.
I like the protection of family homes idea.
If the free market rules because the State has encouraged it to, and the effects of its rule has been what we see now, there should be protection for the people who are the inevitable and un-costed collateral damage.
The average home owner and average renter is in no way responsible for the way the free market works, and the free-market was designed to not take into account many ill effects its activity will have on the people, whose work it exploits at the lowest cost possible.
The market cannot work otherwise because morality (which pertains to good and bad, i.e. happiness and freedom and health) has been specifically removed from consideration. Remember the chant, “Take morality out of business”?
The “single bottom line” demanding maximum profit and return for shareholders over all other considerations, including human and environmental welfare, within laws and regulations so loose they drive trucks through them.
The only welfare requirement is to keep people subdued, distracted, in debt and in fear of horrors near and far, but healthy and sane enough to perform a job, until their job can be profitably eliminated.
John Key’s New Zealand. Thanks John.
Farrar working double shifts? He highlights what he thinks are Labour ‘lies.”
He is wilfully blind to and supportive of National Party lies and their head liars. In some senses that is fair reason to call him a liar. Doesn’t matter whether it happens in double shifts – that is just the way it is.
They’re not lies, they’re just dynamic truths!
Let’s hope you’re right Martyn. Time will tell, as my entirely apocryphal grandmother used to say.
You might like to reset your right-hand-side political poll to see if there is a difference.
I sure Hope thats true Martyn that MISSING MILLION needs to BE FOUND.
“What will be concerning National is the speed of the change of allegiance Labour managed in the latest Colmar Brunton Poll.”
Not really. Labour rise, the Greens fall. National also rise, and more than the combined fall in the Lab/Greens vote.
“in billions of debt because of the Property bubble.”
Are we talking about the people who extend the mortgage to buy holidays and ‘toys’ and ‘lifestyle’ – or increase the family size and the family fleet?
Because personally I have zero sympathy for people who are well-off only on paper. The Consumptive people.
Their numbers aren’t great. Every time there’s a bank rate hike we hear the wails – and the numbers aren’t so huge. What makes those fur coats-no knickers people so important, so ‘deserving’ of protection?
There’s one BTL poster here who politely reminds us that we fools who save are likely to lose years of prudence and abstinence so feckless folk can be ‘bailed out’ and the obscene profits of banks be protected.
Politely – Hell no! Most people in places other than the magnet locations have been denied even seats at the game, let alone a player’s jersey.
When the bubble pops and their properties are underwater – it’s more important to issue the rest of us gumboots and umbrellas.
Could the Green-Labour collaboration grant us that? Or will they preside over a repeat of Muldoon’s theft of a secure future by stealing the pathetic ‘wealth’ of the many to feed the few? (The destruction of Kirk’s superannuation scheme, Mark II.)
Let The Market correct. It may be the necessary frightener to get us out of this neo-liberal misery we’ve created.
I’d be more interested to see what, if anything, this intrepid Band of Beige will do to utterly reform the archaic and tilted monetary system that allows such folly in the first place. Or is Social Credit beyond them?
At which point, if I were Andrew Little, I’d smile wryly and tell New Zealanders;
“You know what, guys? I Think I’ll sit this one out and let National and the free market’s tender mercies sort out your negative gearing and impending mortagee sales.
Sorry about that, but we have real homeless kiwis to worry about. You know the ones – they’re whom you ignored the last three years when you kept voting National as your property values skyrocketed.”
*coughfuck*coughwits*cough*
Brilliant Frank!
Like it, Frank. And perhaps they’ll end up sleeping in their yachts and SUVs. Oh no! The banks will have auctioned those too!
Comments are closed.