Disappointing TV3 coverage of the Winniebox inquiry

Rather disappointed with TV3 coverage of the Peters issue tonight. Despite promising extended coverage of Winston's appearance before the privileges committee many times throughout the 6pm news bulletin, with a hint of going until 8pm, coverage was curtailed half an hour early.

Worse of all, they missed the question time.

I suspect a TV3 network executive screamed at people 'This is boring, get it off!'. But were TV3 really expecting Peters to be anything but an arrogant, overly legalistic pompous a***? Did they really expect him to come up with significant evidence in his defense, other than 'I will tell you tomorrow?' Surely if he had evidence he would have used it by now? While some journalists attempted to build up the hype by claiming there was a small chance Peters would stun the select committee into finding his innocence, given the way most have behaved over this issue I doubt this outcome was expected either.

In their appearances before the select committee both Winston Foreign Minister Peters, and Owen I have a university building named after me Glenn have made it clear they think the world of themselves. For those who do not follow the precise details of who said what to whom, when and where, I suspect the overall impression of this week will be the clash of two over sized egos. People will also remember Winston getting the sack after being evasive with the truth.

Apparently Helen Clark also watched the hearing on TV3 - I can't imagine she was impressed with the coverage or her foreign minister.

Helen Clark is widely expected to remove Peter's ministerial warrant tomorrow. In some forms of coalition government one option may have been to appoint another NZ First MP to act as foreign minister, maintaining the current balance between the parties. I think it says a lot about NZ First that they do not have another MP who could credibly take over Winston's portfolios, even for a few short weeks. Former minister Brian Donnelly would have been the only one worth even considering, but he left to become High Commissioner to the Cook Islands in February 2008. Sadly Donnelly had to resign his position of High Commissioner in August due to ill health. There may be a few in NZ First - assuming there are people who look beyond the Winston personality cult - quietly wishing Brian was still in Parliament. As it has turned out, Brian could not have timed his exit better.

Will Peters survive the election?

With the political career of Winston Peters now hanging by a thread, many are asking whether NZ First will survive this election. Yet in NZ First's case I believe a focus on the chance of the party regaining 5% or more of the party vote underestimates the regional nature of NZ First support.

Last month a poll showed Winston Peters 20% behind National candidate Simon Bridges for the Tauranga electorate. It is likely that Tauranga is now Bridges to lose, and Peters has no chance of regaining his old seat. That said, with NZ First running at around 3% in polls at the time most political pundits gave Peters a chance of making a comeback given Winston's fearsome campaigning skills. The same poll had NZ First on 6% support in the party vote contest - under half the 13.3% party vote percentage gained in Tauranga in 2005.

Shifting the focus entirely onto the national party vote misses something important about the nature of NZ First's support base - it has long had strong regional characteristics. This means the standings of candidates in electorate races in their previous area of strength will have a stronger correlation with their likely party vote than a party with support spread relatively evenly throughout New Zealand.

In a blog post prior to the 2005 election, I looked at NZ First's support base, making use of a useful post by Poster Child* that listed the top 10 electorates by party vote for each party. I summarised the situation based on the 2002 results:

NZ First support appears to be focused around the top of the North Island. In fact, most of these electorates are right next to each other - the Peters disease must be airborne! From Northland to the North, to Taranaki-King Country and Rotorua in the south, an iron passes over an Italian suit, and people fall for it. Thankfully, Auckland city appears to have greater immunity.

I thought it would be interesting to repeat the exercise using the 2005 results. Once again I was spared from having to trawl through all the election results thanks to DPFs election summary from 2005.

Using a map showing electorate boundaries from the Electoral Commission, I shaded in NZ First top 15 electorates in terms of the party vote. NZ First top electorate of Tauranga (then Bay of Plenty) is black, with lightening shades of grey used to illustrate lower levels of support. I can't say the shades of grey used have a scientific relationship to the levels of party vote - the graphic only aims to be indicative.

While Te Tai Tokerau was NZ First's 12th top electorate, I didn't include it as layered shading would have looked confusing - the outline of Te Tai Tokerau is roughly similar to that of Northland in any case.

Once again, the pattern is similar to 2002 with most of the the dark grey electorates surrounding Tauranga. A Winston bomb with a prevailing wind, with Auckland in a fallout shelter.

This suggests that polling in individual electorates, for both the party and the electorate vote is going to be more significant for NZ First than other parties. The survival of NZ First could well be determined by the levels of support in Tauranga, Bay of Plenty, Northland and Coromandel.

Some may wonder why I am so hard on Winston when we both have sceptical views towards the neo-liberal free trade agenda and the current Reserve Bank Act. Quite simply because NZ First possess limited credibility to be an effective advocate on these issues. While Peters may have campaigned on the left in 1996, he was a neo-liberal poodle as Treasurer between 1996 and 1998 - the supposed walkout over Wellington airport may have been an attempt to cover this up. While Peters may be right to strongly criticise Max Bradford's electricity reforms in 2008 - the fact is that NZ First joined National to vote in favour of these changes in 1998.

At the same time Peters was criticising big business, it has been revealed that he was taking large donations from Bob Jones. NZ First opposition to state funding of political parties now makes sense. As Murray Horton says Winston may talk the talk, but he fails to walk the walk.

So I hope NZ First is dog tucker this election. I hope for some political renewal where other parties take up issues such as fair trade and reform of monetary policy, and leave all the wink wink Asian bashing and public harassment of legitimate refugees such as Ahmed Zaoui in the political wilderness where they belong.

NZ First 2005 Top 15 Electorates by Party Vote Percentage

1. Tauranga 13.3%
2. Bay of Plenty 12.0%
3. Northland 10.2%
4. Coromandel 10.1%
5. Rotorua 9.2%
6. Whangarei 9.0%
7. Wairarapa 8.9%
8. Piako 8.9%
9. Port Waikato 8.4%
10. Rodney 8.1%
11. Taranaki-King Country 8.1%
12. Te Tai Tokerau 7.9%
13. Taupo 7.8%
14. Hamilton West 7.5%
15. Rangitikei 7.4%

* A blog that is no longer with us - I wish Poster Child was still with us Bren, if you have started another blog in another guise please say hi :)

PS: DPF I could not find the link to your analysis - if there is one I am happy to add it.
PPS: For some reason blogger made this post before I had finished writing it. I am sure I only clicked 'save as draft' but found it had been published this morning. Be interested to know if anyone else has had similar issues with blogger. If the post seemed to be incomplete earlier - it was!

The Winniebox and the Serious Fraud Office

GWith the announcement by the Serious Fraud Office of an investigation into donations made to his NZ First party the position of Winston Peters as Foreign Affairs minister is fast becoming untenable.

The smartest thing for Peters to do now would be to stand down. He could use the opportunity to claim he is doing it for all sorts of important sounding reasons other than saving his own skin, such as maintaining confidence in the government, a sacrifice for the good of the nation. Peters gets an opportunity to grandstand, an opportunity to clearly state his belief in his own innocence, and his expectation of coming back as a minister as soon as this nonsense is cleared up.

Peters would also be free of any sort of collective cabinet responsibility for the election campaign, which being Winston could bring some advantages.

Sadly, it appears that Winston Peters is simply too arrogant to take the most pragmatic political course of action.

But if Peter's won't go, Helen Clark must suspend him. She has suspended her own ministers for less, in fact David Parker stood down over a whole lot less. If Peters remains a minister while the SFO investigate, it will be difficult to avoid the perception that ministerial standards have dropped to levels not seen since the end of the Shipley administration. That perception has the potential to cause problems not only with the public, but inside the Labour caucus, as any MPs disciplined by Clark will wonder why Peters is being treated so leniently. Many may start to question Clark's judgement, and perhaps even Clark herself.

This Labour-led government is not in free fall - yet. I still rate their chances of remaining on the Treasury benches around 50/50. Despite the National party leading in the polls, they can not lead the Government unless their vote plus their allies adds up to 50% - and that has been a struggle for National all year.

In the case that Peters remains a minister and Labour lose the election, perhaps some people will cast their mind back to the post election negotiations in 2005 when Labour cast off the Greens in favour of NZ First and United Future. In doing so, did Clark write her own political death warrant three years later?

The more hopeful scenario is that Labour scrape home in 2008, and the numbers force the Labour leadership to form a government with the Greens as the primary support partner. In the same way that some people credited the Alliance with rejuvenating the Labour party in 1999, perhaps the Greens can do the same thing for Labour in 2008. One hopes Labour and their supporters can be grateful.

Question time is going to be bizarre

As ministers outside cabinet, Winston Peters as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Peter Dunne as Minister of Revenue will answer oral questions on behalf of the government.

Peters now expects to ask supplementary questions of other ministers, while serving as a minister himself. So we could have the bizarre sight of Peters defending the foreign affairs record of the government, only to be followed by Peters later asking a question to the Minister of the Environment attacking New Zealand's commitment to the Kyoto Protocol. I would imagine New Zealanders will end up being a touch confused, as will the ambassadorial staff of the various embassies when they are asked to summarise the position of the New Zealand government on issues of interest to their home governments.

Until I took another glance at the Parliamentary Standing Orders I had not thought it was possible for a minister to ask questions of other ministers. But the section entitled "Questions to Ministers and Members" does not seem to prohibit this, given that ministers are also members of parliament. I can imagine that Margaret Wilson, the likely candidate for Speaker, will have to make a fair few interesting rulings in the first few sitting days of the new parliament.

As Green MPs have been appointed as Government spokespeople on energy efficiency/solar panels and the Buy Kiwi Made campaigns will this mean they will also answer oral questions on behalf of the government? I assume standing order 370 would apply.

370: Questions may be put to a member (not being a Minister or the Speaker) relating to any bill, motion or public matter connected with the business of the House, of which the member has charge.

The first few days of Parliament are going to be interesting indeed!

Musical Cabinets #2: Peters, Goff and Foreign Affairs

Interesting to see Phil Goff appointed as Minister of Trade. He is expected to take over the Trade Negotations job when Jim Sutton retires.

When Winston Peters was first appointed to the Foreign Affairs job Clark said Peters would consult directly with her over his work in the portfolio, and there would be no Labour MP working as an associate to Peters. But Goff's new job as a Minister of Trade, seemingly a separate portfolio to Trade Negotiations, is an associate Foreign Affairs role in all but name.

Jim Bolger, in his book 'A view from the top' explains how he attempted to put a break on Peters during the coalition negotiations in 1996, when Peter's position of Treasurer was split off from the Finance portfolio.

"Winston Peters, as ever seeking maximum flexibility, was reluctant to agree to a clear division of responsibilities. Bill Birch with his clear insight into Peters knew that precise guidelines were needed if the new arrangments was to work. We therefore produced and published those guidelines."

Perhaps Clark would be wise to do something similar!

While I have previously argued that the principle of cabinet collective responsibility needs to be weakened further, the idea that Peters and Peter Dunne as Ministers outside cabinet are only bound by collective responsibility in their portfolio areas is simply bizarre.

Demarcation problems suggest themselves. Most immigration issues have foreign affairs implications, so given a choice between defending the humanitarian foreign policy of the government and bashing refugees, which way will the Italian suit sway? (I think we all know)

I fear these arrangements have been designed to accommodate the policy whims of personalities, rather than principled differences of opinion between parties. It would have been far better to use the existing arrangements allowing parties to 'differentiate' on matters of policy principles, and drop Clark's assumption these processes should only be used 'rarely'.

Peters will be in charge of overseas aid, and the thought fills me with dread. Peters the humanitarian? Tell that to the Tampa boat people. The Greens will not relish the fact Peters will oversee the increase in official development assistance, a policy the Greens negotiated out of Labour as part of their promise to abstain. Although Peters infamous "flying squad" immigration policy is absolutely ghastly, Frog may find one line useful.

"Become more creative in humanitarian efforts by increasing overseas aid budget as a more efficient means of meeting humanitarian obligations. Effectively targeted aid places less strain on our domestic infrastructure" (my emphasis).

Of course, being Peters, he wants to use aid as an excuse not to take refugees, but a promise to increase aid is there nonetheless, even if it is for entirely the wrong reasons. On Tuesday Peters said a major aim in his new role was to channel more aid to the South Pacific - "the neighborhood and theatre in which we live", which reflects NZFirst policy.

Goff and fellow right winger Clayton Cosgrove have both been appointed as associate finance ministers alongside Mallard. Apparently they are going to be a 'razor gang' looking for ways to cut government spending to pay for Peter's policies. I hope Helen uses this as a tactic to make the 'Gillette three' unpopular, they can suggest cuts, people will be upset, giving Clark the opportunity to come in and rule out the more ruthless of their proposals.

PS: Given Goff's inaction over the cricket tour to Zimbabwe, could he be our next ambassador to Harare?

The Peters disease must be airborne

Over at Poster Child, Bren examines the geographical spread of the 2002 party vote in an interesting way. Looking at the minor parties, he lists the top 10 electorates by party vote for each party, with the bottom 10 electorates for each party.

NZ First support appears to be focused around the top of the North Island. In fact, most of these electorates are right next to each other - the Peters disease must be airborne! From Northland to the North, to Taranaki-King Country and Rotorua in the south, an iron passes over an Italian suit, and people fall for it. Thankfully, Auckland city appears to have greater immunity (yay to the Migrants!).

I have often wondered why Winston Peters' supporters are so geographically bound. As Peters gained nearly 15% of the party vote in the Maori seats in 2002, does the northern north island concentration represent his Maori constituency in the general seats, as these areas have reasonable Maori populations as a percentage? But given his vote, there must be more to it than this. Any thoughts?

While much as been said of the threat of the Maori party to Labour and the Greens, no one appears to have pointed out that NZ First's vote could be drained by the Maori party, especially given his stance on the seabed and foreshore issue. Given his policies I have always found it strange why Peters attracts support from Maori - it seems more than a little insulting to claim it can be explained in terms of just 'face' value.

And as for NZF's worst seats - the educated liberal electorates absolutely loathe and detest Peters. With good reason, Mr Powell.

I hope Winston looses Tauranga, I really do. The less our MMP electoral system is distorted by egotistical upstarts in single electorates the better. Lets lower the threshold from 5%, but do away with the silly rule that allows those who win one electorate to bring their cronies in with them*. Lets encourage parties to base themselves on clear policy and principles - this is what party votes are meant to be about after all.

* Germany requires parties to win at least 3 electorate seats (or 5%) to gain list seats.

Reflections on the latest Marae Digipoll

While the latest Marae-Digipoll of Tai Tokerau shows the Maori party continuing to lead Labour in the electorate, Hone Harawira's support has slumped by 12%.

Dover Samuels currently holds the seat with a 5336 majority. Since April support for Mr Samuels rose from 24% to 30% in the latest poll, while Mr Harawira dropped from 58% to 46%. Independent candidate Mere Mangu gained 15% support. Despite Bishop Brian Tamaki's claims of high levels of support for his cult from Maori, Destiny only attracted 2% support. (I will link to the figures when they become available)

While it would be expected that Harawira's support would drop as the election approached, it is highly likely that the release of their more-right-wing-than-national tax cut policy has cost the Maori party support. Their 'see-no-evil-on-my-tv-screen-in-front-of-me' stance on human rights abuses in Zimbabwe has not helped either.

While I can understand Tariana Turia's party not wanting to be taken for granted by Labour, especially after the foreshore fraccas, I believe their continued refusal to rule out supporting National after the election will cost them significant support. Their position is likely to be the best political gift given to the Labour party during this election campaign. In the Listener, Helen Clark gives a pretty clear indication of what the Labour line of attack on the Maori party is likely to be.

Do you regard the Maori Party as being on the centre left? Definitely not. The Maori Party was last week trying to outbid the National Party on tax cuts and has made extraordinary statements about not being prepared to believe what is on the television screens about the crisis in Zimbabwe. So, they're not automatically being counted as numbers on the centre left? Absolutely not. They're on another spectrum altogether. Not the left/right spectrum. They're on the sovereignty versus the "let's all live here together" spectrum.

A better option for the Maori party would have been to rule out forming a coalition with National, and refuse Labour confidence and supply for the next term of parliament*, unless they repealed or made significant changes to the Foreshore and Seabed Act. Assuming Labour made no such compromises, the Maori party could abstain from confidence and supply votes and not be tarred by supporting a National government (unless of course by abstaining meant National did have the numbers, then they could reasonably reassess).

Labour will have a lot to gain by reminding New Zealand how NZ First went with National in 1996, after giving indications they would 'change the government' during the campaign. This message also has a good chance of resonating with Maori voters, especially if they emphasize the similarity of the opportunistic 'coalition policy' of the Maori party and NZ First.

Over 60 years of New Zealand history suggests Maori prefer centre-left governments. One of the books I read on the 2002 Election (I think it was the Vowles one) included an interesting chapter on Maori voting patterns. It commented that over two MMP elections Maori had been keen vote splitters, often voting conservatively with their party vote (usually Labour) and voting for an electorate candidate with a more radical edge. This pattern seems likely to be repeated in this election, where Maori will be able to punish Labour by voting out the 'turncoat' MPs, and voting for centre-left parties with their party vote. Unless of course, the Maori party show more signs of wanting to be Brash babies.

If the Maori party support National after the election, they will be a one term wonder.

* I think the Greens made a mistake when they did not place a time limit on a similar position on coalition options in 2002, therefore making a backdown over GE virtually inevitable given Labour's genetically modified pig-headedness.