Saving Middle-Earth from the Dark Lord
On Tuesday the Prime Minister of Aotearoa-NZ, Ms Helen Clark, came to visit this electorate of Wairarapa. She received a rousing reception at Masterton Town Hall to give an address to 500+ elderly people and handled their questions, including an unwelcome blast about moral values from the Tory campaign manager, with great finesse. Policy to retain a universal age pension with relief for lower-income pensioners with regard to council rates and caring for lifelong partners was explained clearly and reiterated.
Later that night, the official launch for our candidate in Wairarapa, Mrs Denise MacKenzie, was held at the Tin Hut Pub in the southern town of Featherston. The PM was again the compere giving the main address and it was the major highlight of my trip to have my photo taken with Ms Clark and Ms Georgina Beyer, the current sitting MP for Wairarapa, who is also the first transgender MP in the world.
From there it was back to canvassing and fiddling around with the temperamental electioral roll software and working out how to print labels for a mass mailout to all the teachers in the electorate. Meanwhile, the big issue here in this country is the meningococcal epidemic; a public meeting was held on Monday night at the town hall with Labour committing its unqualified support to the vaccination program; the minor parties seem to have embarrassed themselves in speaking out against the vaccine in a spate of unscientific babble and blatant lies.
Across the Tasman, back in the land of Munchkins, my comrades are keeping up the fight against the Evil Wizard's industrial relations "reforms". The people of New Zealand know all too well about the disastrous changes brought about by Ruth Richardson, the Wicked Witch of the East, in the 1990s National Government, with the introduction of individual contracts and the wholesale abolition of awards. To their credit the Clark Government was able to restore some of the rights of workers in its present tenure.
Today the Palmer Enquiry on the wrongful detention and deportation of Rau and Solon released its report and Howard was forced to apologize to these two women, but clearly there was no commitment to real change and the regime refused to offer a royal commission or a full public enquiry. Just one day earlier Philip Ruddock, the attorney general, claimed that these two women were at least partially to blame for their deplorable fate. Much more work needs to be, and will be, done by refugee advocate groups in Oz to keep the pressure on the evil rulers of this once fertile utopia.
I shall be returning to Melbourne on Sunday after a brief pause in Wellington on the weekend, as I will commence my next rotation in Neurosurgery on Monday. Don't expect me to cure your brain tumour though. I have learnt a lot from my self-imposed exile and will utilize my gains in future endeavours, and will focus my energy on the policy committees in which I am involved. However it remains my intention to obtain a career and experience in clinical practice before I embark on any personal political moves. However, those of you who think I have a chance of sociopolitical or factional realignment during that time in which I gain my life experience might wish to take up marbles or crochet instead.
Niceties and Nuances of the NZ electoral system
On Thursday night I heard the terrible news from London where a number of explosions have occurred, presumably a work of terrorists. My most sincere condolences go to those who have lost family members in the incidents and I certainly hope that the perpetrators are brought to justice quickly. The Prime Minister of Aotearoa, Miss Helen Clark, has signalled that NZ will not tighten its border security policies in response to the blasts, quoting that both NZ and the UK are well prepared for such incidents. I assume that John Howard is doing his best to make as much political capital out of these blasts as he possibly can, again pandering to the fear and xenophobia of the people of Oz.
Yesterday, our plans for a barbeque in the middle of Masterton were thrown out of plumb after our LEC (FEA) secretary drove her car down a ditch in the morning. Luckily, she was virtually uninjured, but her car did not survive and she was badly shaken mentally. The event was rescheduled for today.
In terms of campaign issues, child care is now in the headlines. The National Party are introducing a tax break for one third of child care costs up to $5000 for working families. On the other hand, Labour has budgeted 20 hours of free child care per child aged between 3 and 5 if they go to a not-for-profit community childcare centre. The National’s Policy will remove the free child care to pay for its tax breaks and the net effect will be for private operators to yank up their charges, negating any benefit to parents who can afford to use them. It offers nothing for low and middle income families, especially the many Maori families in this electorate of Wairarapa, many of whom are on sole-parent benefits. It will deny their children a head start on early learning and jeopardise their educational and employment prospects well into the future.
Now a little about Aotearoa’s electoral system. For many years, Aotearoa was divided up into 99 electorates. Voting is optional and MPs were elected on a first-past-the-post (one vote only) basis. This system favoured the two major parties and strong majorities were often obtained. The Senate was abolished in the 1950s and now there is only one Chamber (the House of Representatives). Therefore there is no house of review.
In 1993, the ruling National government passed a referendum to introduce a proportional representation system known as Mixed Member Proportional (MMP). Under the system, the number of electorates was reduced from 99 to 69 and the number of MPs increased to 120. This system allows for representation of minor parties and the provision of non-electorate MPs voted under a list system. Electors are now given two votes: an electorate vote (for their local member, under the old rules) and a Party Vote (a vote for a single party – there are no preferences given). Each party must also publicly release their LIST RANKINGS for their candidates as members who are not successful for winning their electorate may still obtain a LIST SEAT (see below).
Note that there are 62 general electorates and 7 Maori electorates. All Maori persons have the option of going on the General Roll or the Maori Roll.
To qualify for proportional representation a party must win either 5% of the Party Vote or win an electorate seat.
The 120 seats are then distributed according to the relative proportions of Party Vote for all parties who QUALIFY FOR PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. Then, for each party, the seats are first filled by candidates who won their electorates. The remaining seats for that party are then allocated by LIST ORDER. This means, that if a minor party get 10% for the Party Vote they are entitled to a minimum of 12 seats, even if they do not win any electorates. Also there is no obligation for any electoral candidate to have a list ranking; a safe Labour seat member can have no list ranking if they are confident of re-election based on their demographic position.
Generally, under MMP, a party will rarely garner enough Party Votes to obtain 50% of the seats in Parliament. They will inevitably have to form a coalition agreement with one or more of the minor parties. United Future has said that they will support the major party with the higher proportion of total votes. The Greens will traditionally support the Left, while New Zealand First and ACT will almost certainly support the Right. It is not known which party the Maori Party would support.
Wairarapa Campaign Continues
Yesterday, I spent the morning fiddling around with the EMS computer software that’s used for canvassing and analysing voter data. A major problem is that the machines here are so slow compared to the ones in inner city Oz. But we’ll find a way round everything, I’m sure of that!
At lunchtime, it was onto Masterton, the main town of the electorate, to present a laptop to a school. As we needed the MP to do this, I was able to meet Georgina Beyer MP for Wairarapa for the first time. Ms Beyer is the world’s first transsexual member of Parliament. Having worked in the oldest profession in Sydney many years ago, she was once the mayor of Carterton before vaulting into Parliament. She recently appeared on Dancing with the Stars to promote her campaign this year, and she certainly had more than a substantial sense of fashion. In many ways, politically and socially, she is a mirror image of Pauline Hanson.
In the afternoon I went canvassing for the first time on my own. This is essentially doorknocking, but you carry a clipboard with you, and you have to ask the people who they’re going to vote for. You’ve also got to try to then convince them to vote Labour, and if they were solid Labour voters, you’ve got to attempt to get them to put up a sign in their yard. I remember when I first went doorknocking in Gippsland last year I felt quite daunted and not up to the task. This was many times more involved. Luckily we got some good support in the area I did today.
I’m going to talk about the main parties in New Zealand; next post I’ll talk about the way the electoral system works here.
The Labour Party (NZLP) are a centre-left, social democratic party. Its voter base are traditionally the working-class and the poor, but they also attract a lot of votes from the Maori community (ca. 18% of the population) and the "intellectual left" (or "chardonnay socialists"). The NZLP were dominated by its Right faction in the 1980s under Treasurer Roger Douglas who introduced "Rogernomics" which amounted to Thatcher-like economic rationalism and a spate of privatisation. Douglas’ subfaction later broke away under ACT (see below). Presently, there is about a 65-35 split in National caucus amongst the Left and Right factions. Helen Clark, the Prime Minister, belongs to the former, while Michael Cullen, the Treasurer, belongs to the latter. The Labour Party are progressive socially, and were largely responsible for the passing of the Civil Unions Bill for all New Zealanders. The present Clark Government was elected in 1999 after a National-New Zealand First coalition collapsed.
The NZLP is now as united as it has been in living memory. It includes a number of "sectors" which debate and propose policy on issues relevant to particular groups of the population: a Women’s Sector, Rainbow Sector, Maori Sector, and Ethnic Sector, as examples. The Labour Party is often accused by right-wing parties of pandering to the interests of special interest groups and minorities whilst overlooking "mainstream society".
The New Zealand National Party (NP) or "Tories" are the main centre-right party; their policies benefit the wealthy ruling-class and big businesses. They are campaigning on a platform of tax cuts and industrial relations "reforms", including reintroducing individual contracts (those introduced by the previous National Government were scrapped by the Clark Government in 1999), making it harder for unions to enter workplaces, and the gutting of holiday pay and overtime as well as unfair dismissal laws. It all sounds too familiar for most Australians, but the NZ Tories are not quite as socially regressive as John Howard or Tony Abbott. The leader of the NP, Dr Donald Brash, was formerly the governor of the NZ reserve bank.
United Future (UF) are a self-professed "centrist" party advocating family values and a social conservative agenda, but are centrist ("a wet blanket") economically. The Labour Party rely on them for confidence and supply for issues which the Greens (see below) will not support. Their policy is to support the party with the most seats if they ever hold the balance of power.
New Zealand First (NZF) are a breakaway from the social-conservative wing of the Tories. Their leader Winston Peters has held the party together very much on the sole basis of his own personality. They are a xenophobic, homophobic party with a lot of support amongst the older age groups. However they are not quite as bad and have somewhat greater political nous than Pauline Hanson’s One Nation. The Tories need them to form a coalition if they are ever to form government, which is very worrying, as NZF will use social conservatism as conditions for which to form a coalition with National. This would presumably include repealing the Civil Unions Bill, the Prostitution Reform Bill (which allowed for brothels to operate under a legal framework), and more anti-choice policies for women.
The Association of Consumers and Taxpayers (ACT) are an economically ultra-right party formed as a breakaway of the Labour Right in the 1980s. They advocate wholesale tax cuts, a flat 25% tax rate for all persons, slashing welfare and public spending, removal of union rights and the minimum wage, increased penalties for crimes and are nominally socially liberal (but not in practice). Their politicians are amongst the most unpopular in the country. Somewhat oddly, they have a strong Asian presence.
The Green Party of Aotearoa (Greens) are similar to the Australian Greens; they are economically and socially to the left of Labour. Labour needs to form an agreement with them to govern either as a minority or a coalition government; the political effect may be to drag Labour’s policies somewhat to the left. While this is good, the danger is that National may move to the centre and steal the political limelight.
The Maori Party (MP) are a splinter group from Labour who are only concerned about the interests of the Maori population (currently 18% of the total). They have consistently embarrassed themselves and are totally devoid of political ability and cohesion, and many of their policies would do their ethnic group more harm than good.
Hello from Cloudy Carterton
After a rather drawn-out trip from Auckland to Wellington by bus and train (thanks to Aotearoa's mismanaged and moribund rail system) I found myself in the national capital, the night before the rugby Test between the All Blacks and the British Lions. Luckily I had my accommodation pre-arranged as I would have had no chance booking myself - the hotels were charging in the thousands of dollars a night! I did some leafletting and "jaffa donating" in the crowded streets of the city centre, successfully convincing a Chinese family to vote Labour after educating them about the consequences of not doing so (they were previously oblivious to the positions of the major players).
Wellington is small, about the size of Canberra, but the city centre is much more vibrant with a wonderful selection of cafes and liberal-left bookshops and department stores, whereas when I was last in Canberra last August I found it quite staid and lifeless. So far I have also found NZ less cold than I imagined - temperatures are on a par with Melbourne's. Anyhow, the All Blacks won in a landslide which was all too predictable - prompting wild celebrations in the windy city with copious amouts of EtOH.
My hosts in Wellington consisted of some quite prominent names in Young Labour, notably the immediate ex-President and the current Vice President who is a refugee advocate. The candidate for the seat of Rakaia in the south island and his partner also lived in the same house it made me feel somewhat privileged to be staying with these bigwigs. On Saturday night I went with them to a farewell party for one of their comrades who is heading to New York University on a Fulbright scholarship to study constitutional policy.
Today I am staying with the campaign manager for the seat of Wairarapa where I am working. I was able to meet the candidate for the first time. I figured out a little abit about what campigning in NZ involves. An integral part of campaigning, especially in a marginal like Wairarapa, is "canvassing" which is an extended form of doorknocking. It involves asking the residents their intended voting intention and this is recorded on a database. I don't recall doing this for the federal election in Oz last year. Anyway I am also learning to use "canvassing software" which provides electoral analysis. It all seems quite tech.
I also learnt that the Prime Minister of Aotearoa, Ms Helen Clark, will be visiting the new Masterton Hospital which is our local base health facility, under construction, on Tuesday week, and I will have the opportunity to meet her which I am quite looking forward to. I had one opportunity to meet my own Prime Minister when he came to visit during my last year of secondary school at Newcastle Grammar in 1997, but I decided against taking that opportunity.
