The trouble ahead

New Zealand is facing potentially massive political change as its government veers to the Right. How big the change is will depend on who, precisely, is in the government coalition, and what their demands are. None of that will be known for weeks. That gives at least us a chance to buckle ourselves in.

The Official Result of the 2023 General Election will be released Friday, November 3, and it will determine the final allocation of seats in Parliament. However, there’s also a By-election in the Port Waikato Electorate to be held Saturday, November 25, 2023, and that result may or may not affect the final make-up of Parliament. The make-up of Parliament has never been this uncertain in the 27 years since MMP began.

To be clear, the half million votes to be counted won’t change which party leads Government—there’s no way it can deliver a Labour-led Government, and it won’t give any other party seats in Parliament. Instead, the final results will determine how many seats each party will receive, and that, in turn, will determine whether the National and Act Parties can form government alone, or whether they’ll need support from New Zealand First, the result determining the legislative agenda of the new government.

For example, both National and Act want to raise the retirement age, with Act insanely wanting to start raising it on January 1: Act would force me to wait two more months before I can collect National Superannuation (our government retirement benefit, similar to the USA’s Social Security). That’s obscenely unfair not just to me, but to everyone who’s planned their retirement around National Super, only to have everything delayed longer and longer. Not even Reagan was that stupid, and the increase in the USA’s retirement age changed beginning 20 years later, and people like me had four decades to plan. I guess to a party that mainly cares about the rich, it may seem like no big deal, but it can be a very, very big deal to some people.

The proposed change deliberately ignores some important facts. First, National Super is taxed, so retirees are taxpayers—they’re not getting tax-free cash. Second, working class people—especially Māori and Pasifika peoples—don’t live as long as middle class and above peoples do. As it is right now, large numbers of working class people never live long enough to collect the pension, and National and Act will ensure that even more never do. Finally, the Labour Government under former Prime Minister Helen Clark created the National Super Fund to invest money to help fund retirement in the years ahead. All of which means there’s no urgent need to raise the age, and if the new government insists on raising the age, it MUST be done over enough time so people can plan.

The bottom line is that the campaigns of both National nor Act were dishonest about the need for change, constantly aping the absurd “people are living longer now” talking point as if it was universally true, as if the pension wasn’t actually taxed, and as if there wasn’t a substantial nest egg in place (despite National stopping contributions to the Fund under John Key). However, Winston Peters—whose own political base is largely retirees—is extremely unlikely to to go along with it. If National/Act need Winston’s support, raising the retirement age may not happen.

Act has also proposed Parliament pass legislation to arbitrarily define the “Principles of the Treaty” [of Waitangi], apparently without consulting Māori, and then hold a binding referendum on it. This was part of Act’s dogwhistling on race when it attacked partnerships between Māori and the Crown known as “co-governance”, particularly by the Right. John Key reportedly told incoming prime minister Chris Luxon to not to allow the referendum to happen, or he’d see “hikois from hell” (a reference to protest marches by Māori). Green Party co-leader James Shaw said a referendum could lead to violence. If Luxon can’t stop Act on this point, it’s unlikely he’s be able to control his right flank at all. It’s unclear what Winston would do about a referendum, but he, too, attacked “co-governance” as a dogwhistle to racists. The fact that Australian voters soundly rejected the referendum on an indigenous voice underscores both why Act and Winston dogwhistled on race, and also how ugly it could become if Act’s referendum goes ahead.

Always lovely to see a billionaire relieved when
a pesky centre-left government is defeated.

Finally, there’s no certainty on what programmes the new government will cut. Historically, National cuts funding for health and education, but Luxon promised to raise both—though John Key did, too, and actually oversaw de facto cuts. National usually cuts the taxes of the rich, too, however, Luxon has said there won’t be any such big cut for a year or so. The bigger concern is that the economic “plan” national campaigned on has been rubbished by leading economists, and the Council of Trade Unions (CTU) called it a “reverse Robin Hood tax plan [that] enriches mega landlords by hundreds of millions”, having previously noted that only 3,000 households would get the maximum $250 a fortnight benefit from the party’s promised tax cuts, an amount the party constantly promoted during the campaign as if most people would get that much. National later admitted the 3,000 household figure was correct—and then attacked the CTU for daring to point out the reality of National’s “plan”.

No one has any idea what the government led by National/Act (plus or minus NZ First) will actually do, but I think it’s reasonable to speculate that corporations and the rich will do quite well (they always do under National), the poor will be worse off (ditto), and the middle class will largely be ignored, except for bread and circuses to distract them.

Some two and a half weeks from now, we should have a clearer idea of what we’ll all be in for. I feel certain ordinary New Zealanders will be worse off by the end of this term in 2026, and the country will be a much harsher place for a number of reasons—but I deeply hope I’m proven wrong. I honestly doubt that’ll happen, though.

The (political) end is here

The 2020 New Zealand General Election is over, and the preliminary results have made clear that the result is not what I wanted or voted for: Labour won’t be leading government. There are a lot of reasons for that, the biggest one being that voters were incredibly angry this year, and for a lot of different reasons, so the National Party winning government was always by far the most likely result. However, many commentators can’t seem to perceive much beyond the headlines of who’s in and who’s out. Naturally, I look beyond that for the bigger story the election told.

First, some basics about this year’s election. The preliminary count is based on 2,244,380 ordinary votes, of which 1,368,830 were cast before Election Day (approximately 61.0% of total ordinary votes cast). In 2020, 68% of votes were cast early.

Some voter enrolment applications are still being processed, but by 5pm on Saturday, 3,585,232 people were enrolled, which is 92.6% of the estimated number of eligible voters (in NZ, registering to vote is mandatory, but voting itself is not). The final enrolment rate in 2020 was 94.1%. Voter turnout for 2023, then, is estimated to be 78.4% of those enrolled as at 5pm Saturday. The final turnout of those enrolled in 2020 was 82.2%.

The next category is what’s called “special declaration votes” (or just “special votes”), which are counted after Election Day. This category includes people who registered immediately before before voting, overseas voters, and those who used dictation services to vote. This year, it’s estimated there are 567,000 special votes (20.2% of total) yet to be counted, of which around 80,000 are overseas and dictation votes. In 2020, there were 504,621 special votes including 62,787 overseas and dictation votes.

These statistics show us that 2023 voter turnout wasn’t dramatically lower or higher than 2020—there was no massive turnout of voters seeking change. This means it’s just the distribution of the votes that changed, and it wasn’t just about National picking up votes and Labour losing them.

This year’s story is really about the rise of smaller parties. In the preliminary results, the combined vote for the two main parties—Labour and National—was only around 65% of the total votes cast, something I’m pretty sure has never been that low before.

The Green Party not only held onto an Electorate (Auckland Central) for the first time, they also appear to have added two more, the first time they’ve won more than one Electorate at a time. Of the two new ones, Wellington Central seems certain to hold, and the other, erstwhile Labour stronghold Rongotai, the Green candidate, Julie Anne Genter, has a lead of 792 votes—large enough to suggest it will hold when the special votes are counted. It’s worth noting that in the past, overseas votes have helped parties on the Left, the Greens in particular, so they could theoretically, at least, pick up one more MP from their Party List, and/or ensure that Genter wins.

The rightwing Act Party won an Electorate from National without doing a deal like the two parties have have in the Epsom Electorate. That makes this the first time since 1996 they won an Electorate on their own, without a deal with National, and it’s also the first time they’ve won two Electorates at the same election. Their second electorate, Tāmaki, has been held by the National Party for about as long as I’ve been alive, but the MP there, Simon O'Connor, was too much of a religious conservative even for that sort of district. When the USA’s Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, O'Connor Tweeted his happiness about it, leading to strong and immediate backlash, causing him to delete the Tweet. His social conservatism, and his opposition to abortion rights in particular, led the Act Party’s Deputy Leader, Brooke Van Velden, to announce a challenge. The Act Party is hard right on economic issues, crime, and taxes, but it’s generally liberal on social issues. For example, their party Leader sponsored the party’s only piece of legislation that I can remember thinking was good (and I strongly backed it), the ”End of Life Choice Act 2019” to allow people with less than six months to live the option to choose the time of their own death with assistance from medical professionals (it was ratified by a binding referendum at the 2020 General Election; I voted in favour of it).

The other party to have a really good night was Te Pāti Māori, which defeated two long-serving Māori Labour MPs in Māori Electorates: Rino Tirikatene lost the South Island’s Māori seat, Te Tai Tonga. He was the MP since 2011, and family members have held the seat for most of its existence. On the preliminary results, he should be back in Parliament on the Party List.

The other defeated Māori Labour candidate was Nanaia Mahuta, who lost her Hauraki-Waikato seat (which includes Hamilton). She entered Parliament on the Labour Party List in 1996. She was an Electorate-only candidate (not on the Party List), and so, is now out of Parliament.

The conservative populist New Zealand First Party got pack into Parliament, yet another time they’ve come back from electoral defeat to re-enter Parliament. This time, they’ll probably end up with eight MPs, all of them List candidates—they failed to win any Electorate seats. They appear to have benefitted from angry voters more than any other party, in part because they made overt appeals to the loons, goons, and cartoons, along with pandering to those with anti-Māori sentiment, and social conservatives. The fact that the National Party Leader suggested that a Party Vote for NZ First would help National gave all sorts of rightwing voters license to vote for Winston’s party instead, and it sent a message to the loons, goons, and cartoons that they could safely vote for NZ First rather than throwing their votes away on some tiny fringe party. This doesn’t suggest long-term or stable support for NZ First.

No other minor party won either an Electorate seat or 5% of the Party Vote, the two ways that parties can get MPs in Parliament. In fact, if the Party Votes for ALL the minor parties were added together, they only managed 5.29% of the vote. The far-right tiny parties collectively won 2.62% of the Party Vote, but the most worrying was the 1.15% won by a party called NZ Loyal. a party set up by ex-TVNZ presenter Liz Gunn to promote a whole laundry list of conspiracy theories: Anti-fluoridation, anti-1080 poison (which is used against possums), against Bill Gates, against "gender programming", against the World Economic Forum, against the news media (unironically…), against 15-minute cities (again?!), among others. We can hope that most of the 26,141 people who voted for it had no idea what it was, that maybe they just liked the name, and not that New Zealand has that many hard-core cookers (a slang term for those who believe and actively promote conspiracy theories, often no matter out idiotically absurd they may be). The reason that 1.15% figure matters is because if there was no 5% Party Vote threshold, the cookers would have at least one MP, and we’ve all seen from the US House of Representatives the horrific consequences of allowing such people into a serious legislative body.

The biggest share of votes for a party that won’t have any MPs is The Opportunities Party. The party’s leader, Raf Manji, ran as an independent in the Christchurch Electorate of Ilam in 2017, and came in second, behind the National Party MP, and ahead of the Labour Party Candidate, who was third. In the 2020 Labour landslide, Labour easily won Ilam, and TOP had no candidate. In 2023, he ran as the party’s candidate in Ilam, and again came in second (and the incumbent Labour MP came in third). It’s probably unlikely the Labour MP would’ve won if Manji wasn’t in the race, because it’s unlikely she would have received all of Manji’s votes (given the results in other Electorates, it’s probable that the Green candidate would have benefitted enough to still give the Electorate to National.

Taken together, all of this means that this election, while a rejection of Labour, wasn’t a massive switch to National because there was FAR more going on. National won with a good margin of victory, but it didn’t win the sort of landslide that Labour did in 2020. Instead, many voters moved to minor parties, not National. The Greens, Act, and NZ First all benefitted, and of those three, the Greens took the most votes from Labour, Act from National, and NZ First from National, and from rightwing sometime Labour voters, as well as extremists who otherwise would’ve wasted their votes on fringe parties.

A question I think needs to be thought about carefully is, why did so many Labour voters vote Green? In my opinion, the most likely answer is that Labour was running a staunchly centrist campaign—essentially competing with National for the same centrist and centre-right voters. The Greens never do that. Labour could’ve embraced tax reform, for example, like a capital gains tax, but it didn’t. The Greens backed such a tax as well as a wealth tax, and their votes increased. I think it seems likely that Labour lost its more progressive voters to the Greens, and that was enough to lead to such a crushing defeat. Had Labour not tacked rightward, it may still have failed to win government (there was still all that anger, after all), but, if so, it would’ve been lost by a very slim margin.

In the weeks ahead, there will be a lot of arguments over what went wrong for Labour, though there’s a lot of information we simply don’t have (because, among other reasons, exit polling is illegal in New Zealand, so we have no good data on why people voted as they did). In fact, I’m sure I’ll be part of that, quite possibly arguing against myself.

In the meantime, however, one final thought: Since I moved to New Zealand in 1995, Labour and National have both won five elections. That goes to prove, “you win some, you lose some”. It’s inevitable that in the future I’ll again be celebrating an election win. It’s the way of things.

A few Hamilton voters proved me right

Surprising absolutely no one, the National Party candidate won the Hamilton West By-Election, which ended yesterday. The only thing we didn’t know for sure was how low the turnout would be. It was truly awful.

The turnout for the election was appalling. That was expected, but the extent was a bit worse than the most optimistic guesses. During the Advance Voting period (November 26 – December 9), 9,836 votes were cast. That compares with 24,595 votes cast during the Advance Vote period for the 2020 General Election.

The most recent By-Election was in the Tauranga Electorate when former National Party Leader Simon Bridges quit Parliament to become the head of a business lobby group in Auckland. In the By-Election to find his replacement MP, 14,168 votes were cast in the Advance Voting period (In total, Tauranga had a total of 20,784 votes cast).

Altogether—including both the Advance Voting period and votes cast on Election Day (December 10)—14,392 votes were cast in the Hamilton West By-Election. As at November 30, 2022, there were 55,512 enrolled voters in the Hamilton West Electorate, which is 84.09% of the eligible population on that date. This means that fewer than 26% of enrolled voter bothered to vote, and fewer than 22% of eligible voters.

Some journalists report voter turnout as a percentage of the eligible vote. However, unenrolled people can’t vote because they aren’t enrolled, so, in my view, the turnout among enrolled voters is the important statistic. That number, though, should be reported with a notation that, in this case, 15.91% of eligible voters weren’t registered for whatever reason.

I think this matters because otherwise it implies that people not enrolling to vote are “sending a message”, but there are always a lot of reasons why people don’t enrol—and age is one of the biggest reasons. In Hamilton West, a bit fewer than 54% of eligible people 18-24 were enrolled, only 74% of people 25-29, and just under 80% of people 30-34. At least 86% of people 35 and older were enrolled to vote (and the percentage keeps rising with age). The counter argument is that voters can enrol on Election Day, so if they remain un-enrolled, it may be deliberate. Sure, it could be that—or maybe not. There’s absolutely no way to know.

Whenever voter turnout is low, it’s almost certainly the most highly-motivated people who make a point of voting. Generally speaking, they’re the people with the strongest opinions and, in this case, they obviously oppose the current Labour Government. Here are the preliminary results of the By-Election, along with my own comments (the candidates are listed in declining order by result, just as they were in the preliminary results):

POTAKA, Tama, National Party: 6,629 votes (margin of victory was 2,285 votes).

DANSEY, Georgie, Labour Party: 4,344 votes. She went to the National Party candidate on Election Night to concede in person. She said she’ll be the party’s candidate in the General Election next year.

McDOWALL, James – ACT New Zealand party: 1,462 votes.

SHARMA, Gaurav, the former Electorate MP, who ran under his own party label: 1,156 votes.

POCOCK, Naomi, The Opportunities Party (TOP): 337 votes.

POKERE-PHILLIPS, Donna, the candidate for the far-right extremist NZ Outdoors & Freedom Party: 125 votes.

DU PLOOY, Rudi, running as the candidate of both the far-right christianist New Conservative Party and the utlra-far right theocratic christianist One Party: 117 votes.

WAKEMAN, Peter, Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party: 71 votes.

TAIT, Jade, of the ultra-far right christianist Vision New Zealand: 57 votes.

DICKSON, Gordon John, Independent: 26 votes.

FU, Frank, Independent: 22 votes.

OSMASTON, Richard, Money Free Party: 7 votes.

There are a number of things that stand out to me in the results. First, and the most encouraging, was the fact that a tiny, tiny 299 votes went to the most hard-core, hard-right, anti-government, and christianist candidates. That means combined they only got around 2% of the vote in an election where the outcome wouldn’t change anything so people could be free to vote their passion. Clearly the highly-motivated voters who bothered to vote in the By-Election don’t sympathise with the extremist fringe. That’s very good news, indeed.

A combined 5500 votes went to the two opposition rightwing parties, who would be in coalition if the Right wins the 2023 General Election. This time, they together got around 56% of the total vote, which underscores the anti-government nature of the vote. The National Party candidate alone got around 46% of the vote, which is a plurality, but not a majority. The Labour Party candidate got a bit more than 30% of the vote. Since Electorate elections are conducted under the old-fashioned first-past-the-post election system, a plurality is all that’s needed to win, and that fact could help either Labour or National.

Overall, though, the National Party is in a good position to hold the electorate seat in the 2023 General Election, particularly if anti-government sentiment remains strong (which is probable if the Reserve Bank of New Zealand follows through on its threat to deliberately crash the New Zealand economy). Also, the clear majority of combined votes—some 70%—were in opposition to the Government, or, at least, not in direct support of it. Despite all that, nothing can be taken for granted in a multi-candidate election, as both National and Labour would agree.

When I talked about the By-Election last month, I said that “hardly anyone will vote, regardless of who they support.” I also noted that the National Party candidate was “the clear and obvious favourite to win”, and about National, “the wind is still at their back”. I was right on all that (and I stand by all my disparaging remarks about extremist candidates).

I received very little advertising material at my house: The National candidate was first, and I also got material from candidates on the far-right and also TOP. The last one I got was from Sharma, and I found it when I opened my front door, where it had been stuck in the opening. “Sorry I missed you,” it said. The first thing that popped into my head was, “I’m not.” I opened the door because I was headed out to vote, and that was never going to be for him.

I received two campaign phone calls: One was from a Labour Party phonebank, and I was pleased to tell them I’d already voted for Labour. The other call was a Labour Party robocall on Friday evening—and it was, as far as I can remember, only the second robocall I’ve ever had (the first was during the 2017 General Election campaign and on behalf of National).

There was one funny (to me…) accidental thing that happened: Every time I saw the name of Rudi Du Plooy—which admittedly was only a couple times—my brain said, “Rooty Tooty Da Pooty” because my brain conjured up the decades-old ad slogan/product name from American restaurant chain IHOP: The “Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘n Fruity” breakfast item. While I’m not above mangling someone’s name on purpose for comedy or because of a strong dislike, this was absolutely not intentional. I’ve often said that if I could put everything I need to remember to an advertising jingle (or even a slogan), I’d never forget anything. This goes to show that it wouldn’t necessarily mean I’d remember it correctly. It does go to show, I suppose, that I didn’t take anything about this By-Election seriously, not with an obvious outcome that my vote couldn’t possibly affect. It was also easy to call it exactly right—it was pretty much impossible to get it wrong.

Oddly, I’m suddenly craving pancakes…

Disclosures: I’m a member and supporter of the New Zealand Labour Party, but have absolutely no position of any kind with them, nor am I in contact with party leaders. All opinions expressed are entirely my own, based on some 50 years closely following politics and election campaigns (obviously I started when I was an infant…), as well as my personal values. I voted for Gaurav Sharma in New Zealand’s 2020 General Election, the first election I was able to vote in the Hamilton West Electorate.

NZ bans ‘conversion practices’

Yesterday evening, the New Zealand Parliament voted to ban “conversion” practices, sometimes called “conversion therapy”, what I have called “torture”. The bill passed 122 to 8.

The eight Members of Parliament were all from the conservative National Party [see below], but it was a small minority of their caucus, and that’s a good thing. MPs from all other parties voted in favour of the bill.

This bill was always a good idea, but for some bizarre reason the ex-Leader of the Opposition ordered the entire Caucus to vote against the first reading back in August, which led me to write, ”Stupid games should fool no one”. I think she just wanted to stick it to the Labour Party, but it alienated many different people in the National Party. Actually, she was really, really good at alienating her own supporters, and nearly everyone else, which is why she was dumped as Party Leader.

I’ve seen several people saying that religion was a motivator for the eight “no” votes, and it certainly played a role in quite a few of those votes—maybe even all of them, for all we know (except, apparently Melissa Lee). However, it’s also probable that other members of the National Caucus are religious, as is the current Leader of the Opposition, Christopher Luxon, who’s regarded as a conservative religionist (he’s fairly non-committal on the subject).

In New Zealand, politicians—Right or Left—seldom try to use their religion as something to be forced onto others. Since the first MMP election in 1996, there’s never been an expressly “Christian” rightwing party elected to Parliament, despite numerous attempts to do so, and there’s never been a left-leaning “Christian” Party at all, as far as I’m aware.

So, the fact that maybe seven of those eight National Party Members of Parliament may have been motivated by their conservative religious views is less interesting than the fact that none of the 112 other MPs were similarly motivated to oppose the bill because of conservative religious views, and some must've had some. In this country, one can assume nothing about the political behaviour of people with religious convictions (or the religious views of someone with a political leaning, too, of course).

The reality is that times have changed. New Zealand’s conservative politicians (whether actually religious or not) cannot try to force their religious beliefs onto others and win elections—and most would never try. That’s both because of political reality (of course), but also because they’re younger than the old politicians, the ones who did so much harm to LGBT+ people (among others). The current National Party Leader, whatever his religious descriptor, wants to win the election next year (duh—he’d be a pretty crap party leader if he didn’t want that), and that won’t happen if National is seen as an American-style rightwing party interested in forcing a “morals” political agenda instead of working for policies that actually help real people. Not that I’ll accept any of that at face value, of course: I have a lifetime of experience that makes me suspicious of religious conservative politicians. Plenty of other New Zealanders would have to be convinced, too.

Because this was a Labour Party measure, I’ll give the final word on this achievement to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern: To anyone who has experienced conversion practices in New Zealand, please know that you are not broken. You do not need to be ‘fixed’. And we will keep doing all we can to make sure you are valued and loved for who you are. And to every member of parliament who helped end conversion practice tonight – thank you.

MPs voting against conversion therapy bill: Simon Bridges, Simeon Brown, Melissa Lee, Todd McClay, Simon O’Connor, Chris Penk, Michael Woodhouse and Shane Reti.

Previously: In 2018, I talked about my opinion on this sick “practice”.]

The NZ Labour Party image above was posted last night, and included with the Prime Minister’s comments on her official Facebook Page

Suddenly powerless

It was a cold winter evening last night, around 2 degrees (35.6F) here in Hamilton, and it was predicted that the temperature would drop to -1 (30.2F). I was sitting in my chair watching TV, a warm blanket on me, and Leo lying asleep on my lap. Around ten to eight, everything went black.

My first thought was that someone had crashed into a power poll, and it would take only a few minutes before power was restored. A couple minutes passed, and no power.

It was very dark in my house, and my eyes just weren’t adjusting, so I decided to get up and get the torch from the kitchen. Leo didn’t want to move—even though dogs can see in the dark better than humans, possibly because they need some light to see, and there was none.

So, I picked Leo up and walked to the nearby sofa, and, after feeling around to find out at which end Jake lay, I sat down at let Leo jump onto the sofa. I separated a couple blades of the blinds and peered outside and saw there were no streetlights on, something that usually indicates a major power failure. Curiously, there were lights on at the AirB&B house across the street from me; I have no idea why or how, because they were the only ones in the entire area, as far as I could see.

It was still too dark for me to see anything, so I decided to use the torch on my phone so I could see to get to the actual torch. I knew I’d put my phone on the table next to my chair, as I always do, however, I couldn’t see a thing. I felt my way over there, and then the stuff on the table, the TV remotes, some papers, a glass I'd been drinking from, and so on until I found my phone and turned on the torch.

Once in the kitchen, I turned on the real torch, then reached into the cabinet above the fridge for a couple battery operated lantern things I had up there. I turned the first one on, but as soon as I picked up the second one, I realised it didn’t have any batteries in it. I put the batteries in, put it on it’s brightest setting, then carried it to the table by the front door, knowing it would reflect light into the house as well as light up the sidelight window by the front door (making it clear someone was home). I left the other lantern on the kitchen bench.

I had no idea how to find out what was going on: At our last house, I knew who the power supplier was (not the company we bought the power from, but the one that maintains the infrastructure). They had an app that allowed people to check network status, time until outages would be repaired, etc. I had no idea where to start.

I did what most people do these days: I turned to Facebook (my phone was nearly fully charged and I had plenty of data available). The community page for our development had people posting, as I expected, and someone had gone to the local infrastructure company’s FB Page and posted a screenshot  of their post (Side note: if I hadn’t been put so off-kilter by the sudden loss of power, I would’ve known who handled the power infrastructure here because they came to my house to swap out the electricity meter).

The company said that Transpower, which handles sending electricity around the country, had declared a power emergency and urgently told power companies to reduce demand. At that point, the local infrastructure company threw the switch. Their FB Post made it sound like the power would be out for four hours, but what they apparently actually meant was that the rolling blackouts would be going on for about four hours. Yet another case of a company not using a communications professional to write clear information for the public.

With nothing much to do, and not wanting to use up my phone battery, I thought about just going to bed. It would, I thought, be around midnight before the power would be back on, and it was already getting cold in my house. I thought about reading a book or magazine using one of my battery powered book lights. I imagined myself putting on extra clothes and another blanket, and snuggling up with Leo and Jake to keep warm.

That’s when my power came back on, around 45-50 minutes after it had gone off. I found out that some areas were off for a few minutes, and I also found out that other companies in other areas merely used the “ripple” function to switch off electric hot water heaters while leaving the lights on. I guess we just got extra special treatment.

No one was happy about this, not those of us sitting in the dark on one of the coldest nights of the winter, and not the government. This morning, the Minister of Energy, Megan Woods, demanded answers by 2pm today. It turns out it was the result of "commercial decisions" and bad judgement.

Yesterday morning, Transpower warned of heavy demand that evening. This was due to the cable that carries electricity from the South Island to the North Island only operating at 50% capacity, with demand expected to be high due to the cold weather. No one told the public about this, as far as I know. Genesis Power, which runs the Huntly power station (not far from Hamilton), decided not to fire up the third gas-coal fired turbine, which takes several hours to do, because, they claim, they didn’t think it would be necessary.

Then, gale force winds drove weeds into the intakes of a dam in the Central North Island, forcing them to shut it down. At around that point, winds suddenly died completely at a windfarm in the Central North Island, and that’s when Transpower issued an emergency order to power suppliers, directing them to reduce demand (and apparently they took out far more demand than they needed to). No one warned the public about the impending blackouts.

The Minster of Energy said this afternoon that she has made sure that there will be adequate power generated tonight so we don’t have a repeat of last night’s fun. I would expect that there also will be changes in how the system is administered in the future.

Naturally, the Opposition couldn’t resist the opportunity to try to play yet more political games. The National Party continues to deliberately mislead New Zealanders, blaming the blackouts on the government banning new oil and gas exploration permits in 2018, but, as the Leader of the Opposition knows full well, it was only NEW leases that were banned, and the ones granted prior to 2018 are still usable.

She also knows, or should, that no new natural gas has been found since 2000, so the odds of anyone finding any were already slim to none, but, even if they had found some, it wouldn’t be available yet, and she must know full well that the problem wasn’t fuel, it was generating capacity, something that couldn’t have been helped by the National Party’s imaginary natural gas (that doesn’t actually exist).

When I saw the Opposition Leader say, “this Labour government virtue signals but can’t deliver”, it was obvious why she was being so disingenuous: SHE was “virtue signalling” to her base: “Look at me! I’m for burning fossil fuels!“ which plays well with the climate change deniers in her party (a curious tactic given how many of her party actually want action on climate change). Her party’s only solution to any of this was to “partially” privatise the electricity industry so their Holy Free Market™ could (not) take care of everything. And that is precisely how the planet got into this climate mess.

There’s room and a need for honest, good-faith debate about how we should move forward, what our renewable energy future should look like, and how we're going to deliver it, but the National Party is being dishonest and acting in bad faith. They need to clean up their own house first if they want to become part of the solution—for a change.

Update: There are allegations that the "commercial decisions" made by Genesis Energy to not turn on the third boiler was due to the company wanting to make more money from a shortage or electricity, something that Energy Minister Woods is particularly interested in getting an answer to. I would guess that the company did/will deny they did that, but Transpower is definitely investigating. At the moment, all we know for certain is that Genesis apparently decided to second-guess Transpower, and then ignore emergency orders. The questions are, why did they do that, and, more importantly, how can we make sure it never happens again?

Update 2 – May 8, 2023: Today, Transpower was fined $150,000 for its role in the 2021 power cut. The Electricity Authority found that the warnings Transpower made earlier in the day were inadequate, and then that evening they made a major miscalculation, telling some companies that they needed to reduce their electricity load far more than was necessary. Those two mistakes led to the regional blackout. The fine is largely symbolic: Transpower is what's called a "state-owned enterprise", and it's wholly-owned by the Crown. So, the money to pay the fine levied by the government on a government-owned company will be paid to the government. On the other hand, changes made after the blackout have led to electricity demand being managed much more successfully, without blackouts, and with far better warning to the public. These things are far more important than the fine.

Stupid games should fool no one

A bill to ban anti-LGBTQ “conversion therapy” used against minors passed its first reading in Parliament Thursday, no thanks to the New Zealand National Party. The party’s leaders claim to support the ban, but want changes. Seriously. Do they think we’re stupid, or are they?

In case it’s the latter, here’s a brief reminder for their MPs, who perhaps don’t understand how Parliament works: The first reading of a bill is only the start of the legislative process. If a party supports what the bill is for, they vote in favour of it at the first reading so it can go to select committee where hearings are held, feedback given, and amendments are considered. THAT is where MPs dig in their heels if they think a bill they genuinely support in most respects needs to be changed, not at the first reading.

I don’t seriously think they’re too stupid to know that’s how Parliament works—they’re just playing political games. We know this because ALL the political parties in Parliament, regardless of ideology, supported the first reading except National. They knew their votes were irrelevant and the bill would pass the first reading without them, and that gave them a good opportunity to wage more of their divisive culture war bullshit, which is what their stunt was really all about.

Simon Bridges, who was dumped as party leader well before the last election, is now their “justice” spokesperson. He used his speech [Read: Full transcript of the debate] to spread disinformation to present the sort of typical rightwing nonsense arguments against a ban that have been used in other countries—despite the fact that his disinformation was also completely irrelevant to a ban on conversion therapy. Worse, he also flat out lied.

He said that the bill would mean “that good parenting will be criminalised”, and he added that a parent advising their trans child not to take puberty blockers could be prosecuted. It seems to me that he was either deliberately lying or else he doesn’t understand what “conversion therapy” actually is.

Do Bridges and National seriously mean to suggest that a “good parent” is one who would subject their child to electric shock treatment, forced fasting, sleep deprivation, drugs, psychological manipulation, and the other extreme techniques often used in “conversion therapy”? By definition, a real good parent would never subject their child to such harm, and so, they would never face prosecution. Ever. But even bad parents who would choose “conversion therapy” wouldn’t face prosecution unless they were also practitioners who conducted the sessions themselves. From what Bridges actually said in Parliament, apparently any parents willing to personally effectively torture their own children would be what National thinks are “good parents”.

Also worrying is that the party’s youth wing, the Young Nationals, had urged the party’s caucus to support the bill, and when the entire caucus failed to do so, the Young Nationals said they were “very disappointed” in their own party’s caucus. Maybe the National Party just doesn’t care about the views of young people, even when they’re stalwart supporters of the party?

The National Party has become more and more disgusting in recent months. They had a disastrous loss in 2020, and they’ve apparently decided their salvation lies in divisiveness, like rightwing populists around the world. Their leader has been spouting rank racist rhetoric, like the other day when the National Party Leader said there should be a taxpayer-funded referendum on banning the use of New Zealand’s Māori name, Aotearoa, by government agencies. That came a day after one of her MPs floated the idea of banning it.

The reality for me is that I have problems with, and criticisms of, every party in Parliament, without exception. That’s perfectly normal in a democracy. But when a party’s behaviour becomes so disgusting that it becomes an object of contempt, that’s not normal—and it’s definitely not okay. National’s problems go beyond their leader and senior MPs: For example, they apparently may be about to dump their party president. If the National Party doesn’t reverse its slide into rightwing, racist, culture warrior populism, they’ll deserve to lose in another landslide at the next election.

This is a revised and greatly expanded version of something I posted to my personal Facebook yesterday,

NZ Labour proposes Matariki Holiday

Yesterday, the New Zealand Labour Party announced that if it wins the General Election next month it will create the country’s 12th public holiday, a winter holiday observing Matariki, the Māori New Year. This is an awesome idea, and well past time.

The holiday would begin in 2022 to allow businesses more time to recover from the economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the meantime, a panel of experts will determine the best time for the holiday, since Matariki itself can fall between late May and into June.

The Matariki Public Holiday will be a NZ-specific holidays, celebrating Māori culture, something that is unique in the world, and unlike many of the other public holidays. Being a winter holiday, it could encourage New Zealanders to visit places in New Zealand, generating money for travel, tourism, and hospitality businesses at what is normally a slow time of year.

This also creates the opportunity to create a winter festival around the public holiday, and that, combined with the Māori cultural aspects, also creates the opportunity to draw international tourists—once that’s possible again. Our winter is in the Northern Hemisphere’s summer, and that may be an additional draw for some tourists sick of hot summer weather.

Naturally, conservatives oppose the idea. They bleat on, as they always do, about the cost to business without ever considering the benefits, both from increased income for many businesses, and also from having happier employees. To far to many on the Right, workers are a nothing but a cost, and never a resource to be nurtured and cared for.

The Opposition, the NZ National Party, has dismissed the idea, though some of them have suggested trading another holiday for a new Matariki one, but somehow I doubt they’d suggest dropping the other winter public holiday, Queen’s Birthday, which isn't celebrated or observed, except fo the annual Honours List and retail sales.

The leader of the far-right self-styled libertarian-ish party got in trouble this week when remarks he made in 2018 resurfaced. Back then, he said that all public holidays were a sign of a “fascist state” (oh, the irony…) because “I don't think the Government needs to tell people when to have a holiday and when to celebrate things." He’s often derisively called “National’s 55th MP” because even though he technically “leads” a different “party”, he’s only in Parliament at all because the National Party gifts him one of their safe electorate seats. He and his mates in the National Party are in lockstep when it comes to promoting the myth that ordinary workers can “negotiate” with their employer over time off.

In fact, National recently proposed eliminating the requirement that businesses provide meal breaks to workers. Why would they do that? "National supports an approach where employees and employers are trusted to work employment matters out themselves in good faith." That’s one of the most hilarious things they’ve said in this campaign, because it’s seldom true when few workers are in unions and by without them or the support of the law, they’re at the mercy of employers who, they have to hope, really are people of “good faith”.

Meanwhile, Labour has moved to protect workers, repealing the anti-worker rules that the previous National Government put in place, in addition to reversing that government’s deep cuts to education and job training programmes. Labour has a strong record to run on, while the opposition parties are promising to make things worse for ordinary workers. Not a hard choice for ordinary working people, really.

It’s hard to see how promising another public holiday could fail to be a winner with ordinary people, and Stuff’s Luke Malpass noted that “most people don't own businesses and so are probably happy to have a new holiday.” He went on to note, though, that “in the current climate, ironically created by the Government, both debt and sacrifice are uppermost in people’s minds. How a holiday will fit into that remains to be seen.” He concludes: “It is however a bold and confident statement in what may otherwise prove to be a long and dour election campaign dominated by a disease.”

As popular as a new holiday may be, I don’t personally see it becoming a major issue in this campaign: The people who back it probably already back Labour or the Labour-led Government, while those dead set against it don’t. But with the opposition parties staking out unpopular positions when they don’t have to, effectively scoring political own-goals, there’s no way this proposal will hurt Labour. In fact, if anything the Right’s many own-goals suggest that Labour doesn’t even need it to help win the election.

Still, a week is a long time in politics, and our election isn’t until next month. I just don’t expect the opposition parties will suddenly start running positive campaigns, and that may turn out to make all the difference.

A danger for democracy

Last night, TVNZ’s Q+A programme posted the above report on how the New Zealand National Party has suddenly changed its online advertising to something much more aggressive, and highly targeted. Much of it is also very misleading. This same problem is happening in democracies throughout the developed world, and it poses a serious threat to democracy itself.

We all know how the Russian government used propaganda and deliberately deceptive messaging to help elected their chosen candidate, who went on to become the current occupant of the White House. While the 2018 Midterm Elections saw less of that, we can expect to see it return in force in 2020, especially if it looks like the Republican candidate is heading for defeat.

As it happens, the next New Zealand general election is also in later 2020, most likely a few days after the US election. Because New Zealand elections are every three years, this will be the first time the two countries’ elections have happened in the same month/week since 2008 (the US election was November 4, and the NZ election was held the following Saturday, November 8). Both countries' fair and free elections are at risk.

The problem is that ordinary people will have a hard time telling if some political messaging that they see on social media is true or not, especially if the message is steered to them because the person has been targeted. In a fast-paced campaign, deliberate disinformation can take hold—and sway elections.

We’ve seen in the past how this worked in New Zealand, because the NZ National Party has used deceptive techniques before. Investigative journalist Nicky Hager detailed the party’s deeds in the 2005 NZ elections in his book Hollow Men, and he wrote about the secret tactics (allegedly coordinated with the party) used as far back as the 2011 election. That book, Dirty Politics was released on August 13, 2014, about five weeks before that year’s general election. National won re-election in 2014 despite the book, though then Prime Minister John Key’s integrity was called into question, and he never really recovered from that. [Full disclosure: I bought and read both books when they were released.]

This time, it looks like National intends to be more open about its deception. Its ads so far have copied successful ads used by Australia’s rightwing Liberal Party, among others, which wouldn’t be of much interest if so much of their messaging wasn’t deliberately deceptive.

And that’s the bottom line: The issue isn’t that rightwing political parties (or leftwing ones, for that matter) might copy ads used by counterparts in other parts of the world. Instead, the issue is that they’re cynically using messaging—propaganda—to deceive and mislead voters without them having much hope of knowing it’s happening. Just like the USA in 2016.

It seems that much of electoral politics in Western Democracies, especially the marketing tactics used by the Right, has now become about deception and manipulation. That can’t be a good thing for a healthy, functioning democracy, but is there anything we can do about it? With the public having so much distrust of the newsmedia, deliberately curated by those who stand to gain the most from that distrust, who will be able to expose deceptive messaging and tactics? And if there is no one, what hope do we have of countering it?

Right now, we have only one option: To learn to recognise attempts at manipulation. The video above is part of that effort here in New Zealand. We need more of that everywhere, and often. It may be our only hope.

It’s just cake

View this post on Instagram

I may be smiling but about an hour earlier I was not enjoying the first birthday cake making experience (like just about every parent I know!) I recommend cakes that you can legitimately cover in coconut - it hides almost everything. Happy Birthday wee Neve!

A post shared by Jacinda Ardern (@jacindaardern) on Jun 21, 2019 at 9:13pm PDT

The photo above is from NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s Instagram account, and shows her right after she finished making the birthday cake for her daughter Neve’s first birthday. It’s a charming and perfectly ordinary photo of a mother who’s managed to conquer her child’s first birthday cake. It showed something most people could simply like without thinking about it at all..

Sadly, that wasn’t true for everyone.

New Zealand, like every other western country, has its share of hard-line partisans, and also like everywhere else, they can be found all over the political spectrum. But when it comes to pure churlishness and perpetual grumpiness, no one can beat our friends on the Right. A simple birthday cake became their latest object of fauxrage.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern posted her photo a few days ago. This was the reaction from one of her “critics”:

That was mild compared to this bizarre criticism:

That was a bizarre and churlish reaction, given that National Party Prime Ministers were not always depicted in serious situations:

As stupid and churlish as the criticism is, it’s simply routine for some of our friends on the Right: They seem to always look for the worst, most cynical possible view on every conceivable situation—but only if the Left is associated with it, of course. John Key was occasionally at the receiving end of such treatment, and the Right called it “Key Derangement Syndrome”, a dismissive term they used for quite literally any criticism of Key, no matter how legitimate, focused, or on point.

Welcome to the corollary, “Jacinda Derangement Syndrome”, in which they usually don’t even bother to attempt to offer legitimate criticism of policy or agenda, and instead they attack cakes (or similarly superficial things). It’s petty, it’s childish, it’s mean-spirited, it’s trolling—and it’s ever-present. This is only one example, and I’m highlighting it because it’s frankly so stupid.

There’s an obvious large serving of rightwing hypocrisy here. They attacked Jacinda because her photo wasn’t of a serious situation when, in fact, their own party leaders have all been depicted by the media in similarly non-serious settings. Jacinda’s photo was also her own personal one, posted on Instagram and NOT a media portrayal. Are they really trying to say that a politician can never post something light-hearted on their social media accounts? Seriously? Do they really want to go there?!

I can remember a social media photo of John Key standing next to his then teenaged son Max who was “planking” (anyone remember that fad anymore?). Bill English also posted photos with his kids. The current leader of the National Party has probably done the same (I can’t be sure; I don’t follow any social media accounts he may have). What the Right seems to be saying is that there can never be a non-serious portrayal of a Labour Party leader at any time, anywhere, whether in the newsmedia or shared to their own social media accounts. But for a National Party leader? Well, that’s obviously different, right? That’s called hypocrisy.

The bottom like here is that if New Zealand’s rightwing truly wants me or anyone else to take them seriously, they need to grow up first.

New Zealand, like every other western country, has its share of hard-line partisans, and, like everywhere else, they can be found all over the political spectrum. But when it comes to pure churlishness and perpetual grumpiness, no one can beat our friends on the Right. Their birthday cake fauxrage was just their latest example.

Despite that one thing should be clear to all rational people: It was just a cake.

Footnotes: The two Twitter screengrabs are redacted. The first one is from someone with a non-public account, and the Tweet may have been deleted, surviving only as a screengrab. Perhaps they realised how awful they sounded and thought better of it? Let’s give them a chance to repent and go and sin no more. The second one is redacted somewhat against my better judgement: It’s from a public account, but someone who could be a bot or foreign troll for all I know. In that case, it was about not giving any oxygen to someone who may or may not even be real. Neither screengrab was among the worst examples of the fauxrage I saw, but unlike so many other examples, they were neither defamatory nor obscene (and people wonder why I avoid Twitter nowadays…). The comparison image contains examples widely shared on Twitter at the same time, and copyright for those the images lies with their respective owners; they are included here for purposes of example and illustration in the context of robust political debate in matters of public interest.

Polls apart

Recent opinion polls in New Zealand offered up wildly different results and presented completely different trends. There are many possible explanations for that, including timing, polling methods, sampling errors, question construction—or even pure chance. Whatever’s going on, there’s one thing that’s certain: They can’t both be right. Let the buyer beware—and be very sceptical.

The polls (graphic above) were conducted at roughly the same time, but the results are clearly very different. The Newshub Reid Research Poll was taken May 29-June 7 (sometimes they’ve reported May 30 as the start date), and the One News Colmar Brunton Poll was taken June 4-8. This is one of the first possible explanations for the differences: The timing.

The New Zealand Budget was introduced in Parliament on May 30, and the Newshub poll was begun before Budget Day (or on the day…), and finished a week after. The One News poll began several days after Budget Day and ended about the same time as Newshub’s, after four days. In reporting the story, both news shows said their poll indicated what happened as a result of the Budget’s announcement. One News said there was no “Budget Bounce”, meaning the government didn’t go up in the polls and, in fact, they claimed Labour went down in the poll. Newshub, on the other hand, claimed that Labour did get a “Budget Bounce” and said they went up in the poll. Which claim is true depends, obviously, on which poll is more accurate.

The similarity of polling period suggests that the timing of the polls is probably not relevant, though the longer polling period for the Newhubs poll might matter. Overall, this means other factors are probably be at play. Another obvious source of the divergence would be how the polls were conducted.

In the past, Colmar Brunton rang only landlines, which has been a source of complaints for years. This poll was conducted by randomly dialling people on both NZ landlines and NZ cellphones using probability sampling. Their sample was of 1002 people, which is a typical amount. They describe their margin of error this way (read their PDF report on the poll for full details):

The maximum sampling error is approximately ±3.1%-points at the 95% confidence level. This is the sampling error for a result around 50%. Results higher and lower than 50% have a smaller sampling error. For example, results around 10% and 5% have sampling errors of approximately ±1.9%-points and ±1.4%-points, respectively, at the 95% confidence level.

These sampling errors assume a simple random sample of 1,000 eligible voters.

Reid Research hasn’t yet posted the current poll results on their website, so we don’t know for sure if their methodology has changed from previous polls. However, in their older polls, they sampled 1,000 people, 750 of whom were telephoned (they don’t disclose whether they were landline or mobile, but in the past they were landline only). The other 250 were from online polling.

Over the years, there have been many debates on whether the phone method matters and whether Reid’s use of online polling is valid. The fact that Colmar Brunton now rings mobile phones suggests, at the very least, that they listened to critics. But that doesn’t by itself make their results more accurate no less accurate, and Reid’s use of online polling doesn’t by itself make theirs less accurate or more accurate. On the other hand, we could tell if the sampling is problematic if we knew the extent of the correction they applied to their raw survey results.

The things we can’t know, and no one will tell us, is how they correct sampling errors, so we can’t judge if their methods appear to be sound or not. However, they both use industry-standard methods, and, in any case, that, too, doesn’t necessarily mean that one poll or the other might be less accurate than the other.

We also can’t rely on history to help us work this out. In the companies’ final election polls before the 2017 General Election, both polls were remarkably similar—and off. Both polls overstated support for National and the Greens, but of the two, Reid was closest to the result that New Zealand First had, where Comar Brunton greatly understated the party’s support (“greatly” because it was about 50% below the actual result). Both were pretty accurate on Labour’s eventual result. This suggests that their correction for sampling errors may not be fine-tuned enough, that they skewed conservative, toward national in particular.

So, history is no guide, and, at first glance, it looks like we can’t use the differences in these polls' methods or analysis to tell us much, either. This is reinforced by the fact that both polls had remarkably similar results on the possible legalisation of marijuana, which frankly seems odd: Why are they so hugely different on political polling, but so similar on the referendum? The answer could well be the question asked.

We don’t (yet?) know what, specifically, but the question reported on Newshub was simply, “Should we legalise cannabis?”, which is a very broad question. On the other hand Colmar Brunton asked:

“A referendum on the legalisation of cannabis will be held at the 2020 General Election. Possible new laws would allow people aged 20 and over to purchase cannabis for recreational use. The laws would also control the sale and supply of cannabis. At this stage, do you think you will vote for cannabis to be legalised, or for cannabis to remain illegal?”

That question is reasonably fair, given that the exact wording of the referendum hasn’t been released yet, but the general structure of the proposal in the question aligns with how the media has described it. The poll results showed that people under 34 were more likely to support legalisation, and those over 55 were least likely. It also found that National Party supporters were more likely to oppose legalisation.

The Newsbub Poll result produced a closer result than One News’, but found similar ideological variation. By itself, this doesn’t seem to support the claim that the One News sample skewed older and more conservative than it should have. But another question may reveal a bias.

The worst-worded question in the One News poll was this: “Would you consider voting for a party with Christian or conservative values at the 2020 General Election?” This should have been bloody obvious to everyone involved, but those two are not automatically the same thing or even symbiotic. National is a conservative party with conservative values. New Zealand First is a more moderate party with conservative values. Hell, even the Centre-Left Labour Party has some conservative values. But all of those parties are also firmly secular.

So far, only one rightwing “party” (technically, it is only announced, and doesn’t exist yet) is positioning itself a “Christian” party, but the only one claiming “conservative values” is a “Christian” party in all but name. The question should have been two questions.

We know this question was deeply flawed because of the results: Those most likely to support such a party parties were: Pacific Island peoples (who are often very Christian, but not necessarily Christian), Asians (who are often conservative, but not usually Christian)—and people 18-49? SERIOUSLY?! Every poll conducted, and all the social science data we have, shows that people in that age group are less religious and less conservative than older generations, but the poll says they’re among those most receptive to “a party with Christian or conservative values”? At the same time, voters 60-69 were reported as less likely to vote for either kind of party, and that, too, is at odds with research that indicates religious affiliation and conservatism goes up with age. Are we really supposed to believe that young voters are suddenly more religious and more conservative than their parents/grandparents? That seems highly improbable.

Further polling with properly constructed questions might explain why this question’s poll results are so wildly divergent form everything we know about people’s religious and ideological compartmentalisation, but, on the face of it, it appears that the One News poll may, indeed, have skewed conservative, as it did to some extent in 2017. As it is, the results for that one question cast a shadow over the entire poll.

The bottom line is that we cannot yet explain why the two polls are so divergent on political questions, yet similar on the marijuana referendum. It seems unlikely that timing accounts for the difference. Polling methods, sampling errors, and the correction of them, could account for the divergence—were it not for the similar results on the referendum. That leaves question construction, and that was certainly a problem with one question at least. That means that, at the moment, pure chance alone is as good an explanation as any.

These polls, as with most polls, must be taken with an entire mine of salt. The reliability of the entire polling industry has been questioned since so many companies seemed to get it so very wrong in the USA’s 2016 presidential election. However, most US polls actually did far better than the popular belief holds, something most people don’t know. Because of that doubt, though, polling companies must redouble their efforts to make their polls as accurate as humanly possible. One or both of these two polls haven’t done that—we just can’t tell for sure which it is or if it's both.

Let the buyer beware—and be very sceptical.

Striking fear

There are some professions that are vital to keeping our civilisation going, and among them is education. They teach the basic knowledge that makes every other profession possible, and they reinforce our civilisation. I have a lot of respect for teachers and the work they do. I don’t think they’re paid enough, not by a long shot, and they should have better working conditions. I’m also now strongly pro-union. But I’m also a pragmatist, and this week’s teachers strike in New Zealand is skating closer to making things worse.

The 50,000 primary school teachers and principals and post-primary teachers went on strike this week, and it was about conditions as much as pay. It was not only the biggest teachers strike in New Zealand history, it was also the biggest strike of any kind (the second largest was the 1951 waterfront dispute, which had 22,000 people on strike at its height. Last year, a total of around 70,000 people went on strike, the highest number since the 1980s.

Times have changed, though. Unlike the five-month long 1951 waterfront strike, modern strikes last a single day. Moreover, it’s illegal for them to strike except during their bargaining period, and they cannot engage in wildcat or solidarity strikes, nor strikes for political reasons (they can still hold rallies for such things, of course—as long as they’re held on their own time).

Unions represent only about 17% of waged workers, most of which are white-collar jobs, especially in government agencies (which includes schools and hospitals). And therein lies the problem.

Government workers are at the whim of the government of the day, and for decades both major parties have pursued basically neoliberal economic policies that avoid public spending and encourage lower taxes and free markets. There are differences in priorities, with the National Party favouring business (big business in particular), and Labour favouring social spending (health and education in particular). Over the nine years that National was in government, it spent so little on education and health that the sectors had effective budget cuts. The current Labour-led coalition government had been trying to fix those issues, health and education in particular.

This raises an obvious question: Considering the virtual pay cut that teachers and nurses endured during National’s time in government, why are they striking now, with a sympathetic government, instead of when National was in power and causing the problems? The heads of the teachers’ unions gave disingenuous answers to that, but it’s nevertheless true that, publicly, the unions did nothing for nine years.

This matters because they’re wearing out the patience of New Zealanders. Overall, people have enormous sympathy for teachers, but if they keep striking—and secondary teachers are striking again next week—that patience will run out. And if New Zealanders then blame Labour for these strikes, then the unions will get to deal with a National-led government in 2020—and they will lose, just like always. Is that really the outcome they want?

To be clear, I don’t think the current government has gone far enough with teachers. I think they should have decided on a smaller budget surplus and instead invested the money in education and health. But Labour is sensitive to the charge they can’t handle the economy; even though the economy does better under Labour than under National, the myth (fuelled by Rightwing propaganda) persists that Labour Governments are profligate. That, combined with a neoliberal economic consensus (maybe Neoliberal Ultra-Lite, in the case of Labour…), it was probably inevitable that this government would go too slowly to fix the problems that the previous National government created.

However, it is what it is: The budget is focused on some sorely needed social spending (like on mental health, for example), and they’ve chosen to run a large budget surplus. But, who knows? If the current occupant of the USA’s White House manages to utterly destroy the world economy through his ignorance, then we may be glad that the current NZ Government has run surpluses. Teachers, however, may feel differently.

I hope teachers get what they want, and that it can happen sooner than next year. But unions have to think long and hard if their strike actions are really helping their goals, or only making a National Party-led government more likely in 2020. If they switch to rallying on their own time, rather than closing schools and inconveniencing parents, they may get away with it. But if they keep pushing so hard, they could end up making sure they’ll have to wait much longer for what they want.

The most successful unions work with management (in this case, the government) to find solutions. I don’t see that happening at the moment, and both sides seem to be digging in their heals. They need to find a way forward, but I just don’t se how continual strike action can possibly bring that about—but it could make things much worse.

Update: "Minister intervenes in teachers' pay dispute, calls forum" – RNZ (Radio New Zealand)

Not their destiny

New Zealand just went through "Christian Political Fortnight" as the newsmedia gave breathless coverage to two people talking about forming Rightwing “Christian” political parties. The important thing to note is that based on history, and the nature of modern New Zealand, and the dynamics of the 2020 elections, any such parties, if either actually happens, are almost certain to fail.

Since the MMP era began in 1996, no overtly or mainly Christian Party has ever crossed the 5% threshold (see chart above) or won an Electorate Seat, and so, none have ever entered Parliament [a YouTube video from CGP Grey, “Mixed-Member Proportional Representation Explained” explains the MMP electoral system we use in New Zealand]. The best they ever did was way back in 1996. Some would say that the second-best year was 2014, however, that year the Conservative Party denied it even was a “Christian” party, though it was led by a self-described conservative Christian and it espoused positions backed by conservative Christian activists. Does it even count as a “Christian” party? Probably not, but including them in the chart shows that not even a non-Christian “Christian” party has been able to get into Parliament.

There was another party, United Future New Zealand, that was formed by the merger of a conservative Christian party (Future New Zealand, which used to be the Christian Democrats) and a centrist one, the United Party. It was in Parliament 2002-2017, though with just one MP from 2008 until 2017. The party was saddled with Rightwing Christianists from 2002-2007, though they left in a huff before the 2008 election, which allowed then party leader Peter Dunne to declare the party solidly centrist. The thing with United Future is that not only was it not officially a Christian party, they also didn’t officially push positions backed by conservative Christian activists, even if its conservative Christians caused trouble for Dunne and the party, particularly when it was in coalition with the Centre-Left NZ Labour Party. The fact that the party did so well in 2002 was precisely because of the centrist policies Dunne advocated, not the because of the Rightwing “Christian” people tagging along, so it’s simply not logical to lump them in with actual Christian parties, all of which have been Rightwing in New Zealand (although the early leaders of the Labour Party often described their agenda as “Christianity in action” or “Christian socialism”). So, the fact United Future had a gaggle of grumpy conservative Christian MPs didn't make it a “Christian” party in any way, in my view.

To do well, a Rightwing “Christian” party would have to tap into a large field of like-minded voters, but there’s no evidence that such a large group exists. Almost half (48%) of New Zealanders said they were Christian in the 2013 Census, the most recent figures we have available due to the disaster that was the 2018 Census. However, 42% of New Zealanders said they had no religion, a figure that includes not only atheists and agnostics, but also believers of various sorts who don’t have a particular religion. 6% declared non-Christian religions, and 4% gave no answer whatsoever.

Conservative Christians of all sorts make up maybe 5% of the population, give or take, but let’s be generous and say it’s double that. Isn’t ten percent of the population enough potentially? No, and for one reason: Adults. The Census counts everyone who is in New Zealand on Census night, resident and visitor, adult and child. We cannot assume that the 5%, let alone the overly generous 10%, are adults eligible and registered to vote.

Even so, let’s pretend that a very generous 10% of the registered voters are Rightwing Christians. Even if that were true, any explicitly or implicitly “Christian” party would still fail to get 5% of the Party Vote, as they always have. That’s because most conservative Christians care about a lot more than just social issues, which is the only point of difference that Rightwing “Christian” parties have from other parties. Such voters know that if they want to get things done in Parliament, they need to be IN Parliament, and the only conservative party that will back them, at least some of the time, on their social conservatism—and get into Parliament—is the New Zealand National Party. Most conservative Christian voters in New Zealand have historically been astute enough to know that a vote for a Rightwing “Christian” party is a wasted vote, so they vote for “good enough” National.

So, at the moment, there’s a lot of blustering about the possible two Rightwing “Christian” parties that may be formed, either by National MP Alfred Ngaro, or by the leaders of a far-right “Christian” cult church that set up a Rightwing “Christian” party that tried and failed to get into Parliament some 15 years ago. Neither one is a serious contender for success this year, though of the two Ngaro has a slightly better chance.

I’ve read commentators making all sorts of breathless predictions, such as, Ngaro (who I think is an opportunistic hypocrite) could appeal to Polynesians who back Labour. That relies on the false premise that they always vote religiously, and they obviously don’t. Second, there are many reasons why such voters often back Labour, just as there are many reasons apart from religion why some conservative Christians back National. Turnout and actual vote totals suggest that National already has the lion’s share, so to speak, of conservative Christian voters of all races, and most such voters any new “Christian” party got would come from National. In any case, it’s insulting to Polynesians—or anyone, really—to suggest they’d be single-issue voters because of their race or culture.

A conservative Christian wrote a piece for Noted, talking about why these parties Rightwing "Christian" parties would be bad for conservative Christians. Among other things he said:

Many voters implacably oppose legalising marijuana. Some Christians seem to believe there is an 11th commandment that says “Thou shall not smoke dope”. This could be a good banner for Ngaro and his Christian soldiers to march under, gathering up other clean-living folk to push the party over the 5% barrier into Parliament without having to win an electorate seat.

What he was talking about is that there will be a referendum on some form of legalisation of marijuana held at the 2020 election. I’m sure it will draw some older voters’ ire, and also that of some religious conservatives. However, they always vote, anyway—older voters in particular. At the same time, that referendum will also draw younger—and more Progressive—voters to the polls to vote for legalisation, and younger voters vote overwhelmingly for the Greens (in particular) and also for Labour—not National, and definitely not for any Rightwing “Christian” parties campaigning against the very position they support.

So far, all that suggests no net gain for National, but probably a loss of Party Votes if the Rightwing “Christian” parties do well, but not well enough to get into Parliament. At the same time, the very referendum that might drive “implacably opposed” social conservatives will also drive younger voters to cancel them out.

That leaves only one way for Rightwing “Christian” parties to get into Parliament: Winning an Electorate seat. They have two ways to do that: That church's party could take the Māori Electorate of Te Tai Tokerau in Northland from Labour, or for National to gift a safe National seat to Ngaro. Both are fraught.

The Te Tai Tokerau scenario assumes an awful lot, not the least that voters will pick the bombastic Hone Harawira rather than the incumbent MP, Labour’s Kelvin Davis, who is a government minister. It’s impossible to see any scenario in which any National Party Prime Minister would give Harawira a ministerial portfolio. I think it’s likely that his time has passed, and his campaign would come across as little more than a quixotic grudge match. And that assumes the often Left-leaning Harawira could resist fighting with the Rightwing “Christians” he was in bed with.

It’s possible that National could gift a safe National seat to Ngaro, but where? There are a lot of electorates that National can count on winning, but that doesn’t mean their voters are obedient and subservient to the party’s wishes as the National voters in Epsom are. Moreover, many National voters have no particular love for Rightwing “Christian” politics, so if they lack party obedience, National can’t count on getting Ngaro in as the candidate from some Rightwing “Christian” party.

This all matters because if—IF—the Rightwing “Christians” fail to cross the 5% threshold, but if—IF—they win an Electorate seat, then all their Party Votes will count. This means that if they got around 3% of the Party Vote AND an Electorate seat they’d likely get 3 or 4 MPs (depending on a number of factors), and that could literally give National a shot at of re-taking government.

On balance, there is a remote chance, built on a a number of things going absolutely perfectly, that could enable Rightwing “Christian” party into Parliament. This is highly improbable to happen because 1. Rightwing “Christian” politicians (and Rightwing “Christians” in general) aren’t very popular in New Zealand (they’re called “god-botherers” by ordinary Kiwis), so they’d have a hard time gaining votes from anyone but their small base—most of whom are too practical to abandon National. 2. New Zealand is barely Christian (or, it wasn’t in 2013…), and the number saying they’re Christian has been falling steadily; New Zealand is much less Christian than it was 23 years ago when a Rightwing “Christian” party came the closest to getting into Parliament. 3. The very referendum that conservatives think will help a Rightwing “Christian” party into Parliament will also drive their exact opposites to the polls, likely far more than cancelling out any benefit to the Rightwing “Christian” party/parties. And, finally, the people behind these Rightwing “Christian” parties that may come into being are people who aren't liked generally and who have a history of saying polarising things that turn off the majority of mainstream New Zealanders, and, partly because of that, there’s absolutely no mass affection for them.

Given all that, and especially if Labour is still popular next year, I feel confident saying that this fortnight’s flurry of news about the possible formation of a Rightwing “Christian” party or parties has been all sizzle and no sausage. I will, however offer two words of warning: Brexit and Donnie. Hardly anyone thought those two elections would turn out the way they did, and that has taught us that one underestimates the far right at their peril. We are seeing the march of far right, fascistic populist nationalism all over the Western world, and it would be foolish to think it can’t happen here, too, no matter how improbable that may be. However, if it does come, it’s unlikely to be religious based, and that’s one thing we can take some comfort in.

Update: One of the two parties is not going ahead.

Related:

“Take it from a Christian conservative: a Ngaro splinter party is a terrible idea” – The Spinoff (also linked above)
“John Armstrong's opinion: Christian parties are of little assistance to the centre-right” – TVNZ’s One News Now
“I don't see Brian and Hannah Tamaki's Christian party lasting long” – Stuff
“Could Christian soldiers march no-mates National into office?” – Noted
“Coalition NZ: Hannah Tamaki, KFC, abortion, Alfred Ngaro” – Newshub
“The birth of Destiny’s child” – newsroom
“Where Hannah Tamaki stands on homosexuality and Jacinda Ardern” – Newshub