Balance of trade

We've got a balance of trade surplus. This is great news. In Q4 2012 we imported $3.5 billion worth of stuff and exported $3.9 billion.

The problem we have isn't the trade of physical stuff, it's the trade of invisibles. We borrow too much and pay too much in interest.

Poll dancing

The latest Colmar Brunton poll on David Farrar's Curia blog shows the government's in a good space at the moment, thanks to a 5% bump for National. Labour has slid two points while the Greens slid one. This appears to be all down to John Key's popularity as preferred Prime Minister increasing 5%.

On these numbers, National would be on 62 seats, which plus Act and United Future with 1 each gives them a majority of 1. Should the Maori Party survive or at least retain its 3 seats, the John Key led bloc will have a majority of 4.

Of course MMP politics isn't always this simple. David Farrar's numbers assume everyone retains their seats. My guess is that Act will lose its seat at the next election, with the National candidate taking it, while Peter Dunne may survive in Ohariu. As mentioned above, the current ructions in the Maori Party could see all three of their seats lost to Labour. And that's where it gets interesting. If Labour wins back all of the Maori seats (bar Hone's), there won't be the overhang their currently is.

Using the handy MMP calculator from the Electoral Commission's website, if the Maori Party loses all its seats, there will be no overhang and parliament will revert to 120 seats. This means National could govern alone, with 63 seats. Ironically, the death of the Maori Party at the polls could very well deliver Key his third term.

Why I'm not giving up

Alf Grumble responds to my comments in today's New Zealand Herald, asking why I don't just pack it in and give up on the issues I care about. After all, the first attempt at getting a referendum on the flag failed to attract enough signatures.

It's pretty simple really. I'm a New Zealander. I don't give up just because things are hard.

But more specifically, the 2005 referendum attempt wasn't "mine." I only played a bit part. I was studying at the time and gave what spare time I could (and probably a bit more than I should've) - Will de Cleene was the Wellington co-ordinator for the campaign and did most of the hard work. I simply collected signatures. The fact we got 100,000 signatures without any real organisation (apart from a solitary paid organiser, Iona Pannett) was actually a good achievement.

I'm sure both Will and myself will attest our biggest problem was that we didn't have the sort of network needed to bring about a referendum - the sort of network that enabled the petitions on smacking and asset sales to be converted into referendums.

Unfortunately from Alf, it looks like next time it might just be a lot easier:

Scenes from the decline of western civilisation

Ian Wishart posts an extensive review cut and paste exercise on Mark Steyn's book After America: Get Ready for Armageddon(!). The book is the usual Mark Steyn fair of misused statistics and ridiculous assertions, wrapped in his own brand of angry paleo-conservativism. To be fair to Steyn, he is a good and witty writer. But that's where his skills end.

There are so many things I could write about how ridiculous this book is, but numerous others have already done so. Something that stood out to me was Steyn's continual attempts to make comparisons between the glorious past and the horrid present. One such example is his attempt to show the decline in chivalry in disaster situations - citing the number of women and children who survived the sinking of the RMS Titantic and then stating:

“Eight decades after the Titanic, a German-built ferry en route from Estonia to Sweden sank in the Baltic Sea. Of the 1051 passengers, only 139 lived to tell the tale. But the distribution of the survivors was very different from that of the Titanic. Women and children first? No female under fifteen or over sixty-five made it. Only five percent of all women passengers lived. The bulk of the survivors were young men. Forty-three percent of men aged 20 to 24 made it.” 

It's curious that Steyn doesn't mention the name of the "German-built ferry" that sank in the Baltic Sea. I've actually seen a documentary about it some years ago and the mention on Wishart's site twigged my memory, and after a few minutes Googling I discovered the ferry was in fact the MS Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea on 28 September 1994.

This disaster fits the bill for what Steyn is on about. Read through the details of the sinking of the Estonia though,  and you'll quickly see why Steyn neglected to mention the name of the ship: the two disasters are incomparable because of the amount of time it took each ship to sink. The Titanic took over two and a half hours to sink. The Estonia took less than half an hour. Perhaps more importantly, the Titanic was in calm but icy conditions when it ran into the iceberg. The Estonia was in the middle of a storm.

It's clear that this comparison is simply wrong. While there are probably many other instances of the decline in chivalry that could be cited, Steyn decided to choose the worst possible. You really have to wonder about the standard of his other comparisons are. I'd guess pretty low.

RIP Marcia Russell

Marcia Russell has left this world. As readers of this blog (all six of you) will know, I named my blog after Marcia's groundbreaking series Revolution on the 1984 - 1990 Labour Government.

Gay marriage and Key's third term

The Dim-Post argues the Prime Minister's support for gay marriage is a huge stroke of luck for Labour. In the next Labour-led government, there won't be any pressure from Labour's activists to enact gay marriage while Labour's own Louisa Wall gets the credit for bringing the change about.

But the more I think about it the more it seems the biggest winner from the gay marriage debate is the Prime Minister and his government. As I've argued here previously, the biggest impediment to a third-term for National in 2014 (on current polling) is a lack of allies to the right. The most viable new kid on the block is Colin Craig's Conservative Party (CCCP). Craig's own positioning on the debate - by making outrageous statements on homosexuality - is both opportunistic and playing to the ultra-conservative base. It's likely he'll pick up votes from disenchanted social conservatives who would otherwise vote National or Act (and maybe even NZ First).

It's not unreasonable to guess the CCCP might be propelled into parliament off the back of this debate, even though it appears to be largely over. With Act on its way out (bringing in no extra MPs the people of Epsom could very well just throw their lot in with Paul Goldsmith) and no other potential partners, the CCCP taking 5% of the party vote wouldn't be impossible. Craig certainly has the money to throw at the party.

All of this means the chances of there being a new ally for National post 2014 just got a lot better. Even if Labour are able to repeat their 1999 performance (38% of the party vote) off the back of opposition to the mixed ownership model, and the Greens are again above 10%, a National-led government with support from the Conservatives, United and the Maori Party could still hang on with the same level of support. The likelihood of this outcome is even greater if the threshold is decreased to 4% of party votes (abolishing the one-seat rule would also have no impact).

The net result, though, is that National will be able to stay in office 2014 - 2017, even with a reduced share of the party. By then gay marriage will have been enacted, the sky wouldn't have fallen in and Craig will probably have to find another issue to make stupid comments about.

Look who's back

A few years ago a blog called "Queen and Country" appeared, co-authored by a "Bill Wilmot" and Aidan Work. As you'd imagine its line was distinctly pro-monarchy, and strangely included pictures of the Queen supplied by the Monarchist League. It took a strange (almost creepy) interest in myself, although hilariously getting things wrong at the same time. I've suspected for a long time that "Bill Wilmot" is in fact Aidan Work by another name - his use of sock-puppets on Wikipedia (due to being banned for vandalising articles) with made-up names is well documented.

"Bill Wilmot" who has exactly the same spelling and writing capabilities of Aidan, claimed I worked firstly for the Ministry of Economic Development and was its deputy secretary (in fact there's two Lewis Holdens in the world, and we did in fact both work for the MED) and secondly (by snooping on my Facebook profile) that I worked for IBM, which according to some conspiracy theorists is responsible for the holocaust (in fact they just sold punch-card systems for the German census, there were about as morally responsible for the Nazis as Coca-Cola, which is not a lot).

One of the most unintentionally funny posts on Queen and Country was the foundation of the "Conservative Democratic Unionist Party of the Dominion of New Zealand." Bill/Aidan complained that the mainstream conservative parties in New Zealand were not conservative enough, and advocated such "conservative" policies as the death penalty for anyone in possession of drugs, banning the Maori Party (along with the National Front, for balance of course), repealing the Human Rights Act so anyone could freely criticise "homosexual propaganda". I'm not making this up.

So it's no surprise that Aidan has thrown his support behind the CCCP:

Of course, it's not fair to tar everyone in the CCCP as holding the same views as Aidan. It's just funny to me that he's jumped on the Conservative Party band-wagon because they have an "anti-apartheid & anti-republican" platform. I can't figure out where he's got this idea from, it's not stated in the party's policy platform that they oppose a New Zealand republic (in fact they support binding referendums). The only place they come close is in their principles statement, which mentions New Zealand's membership of the "British Commonwealth". That is clearly a mistake (sadly a common one) but hardly a statement of support for the monarchy, as the majority of members of the Commonwealth today are republics.

The CCCP propaganda machine

As my two regular readers will know, I argued following last year's election that National needed to play the MMP game and talk to Colin Craig's Conservative Party (CCCP). After his latest outburst on gay marriage, I'm sure this strategy would work. Not because I agree for one minute with his views.

In a way, Craig's strategy is a good one. He's dog-whistling to all the homophobic, anti-feminist voters with his comments on gay marriage and promiscuous women. My hope is that Craig takes all the social conservative voters out of NZ First and National.

Of course I don't agree at all with Craig's views on either issue. And social issues are almost always matters of conscience. Hence they make little difference to creating governments, which stand or fall on confidence and supply. The CCCP propaganda machine has cranked up - the question now is whether it can carry Craig into a by-election, or last until the next general election.

The passionless people's forbidden subjects

Andrea Vance covers so-called the "forbidden" subjects of New Zealand politics: euthanasia, gay adoption and abortion. All subjects, as a social liberal, I would argue are for private citizens to decide on, not the state.

And they're all subjects I'm sure will make some of you recoil, close this window in your browser and have a strong drink. Which reminds me of something I read in an interview last week with Gordon McLauchlan in the New Zealand Herald, discussing his new book The Passionless People Revisited. It's actually a sequel of The Passionless People, a often funny analysis of New Zealand in the 70s. 

McLauchlan doesn't sound like much of a fan of John Key. Which is not surprising given his generally left-wing take on the world. But what resonated with me was his description of political debate in New Zealand:

"There is no debate in this country. A typical New Zealand debate involves someone shouting and someone shouting back and then there's an embarrassed silence."

McLauchlan is right on this point. There's a clear link between our inability to resolve the above "forbidden" subjects - either way - because we (and by that I mean the public at large) simply won't debate them. Instead, that's left to the special interest groups, who the rest of the population generally regard as strange, slightly possessed and possibly suffering from OCD. Some, such as myself, are.

And because the subjects are controlled by special interest groups, they don't progress anywhere. Which is the obvious question that goes unanswered: why, when there's clearly interest in all of these issues, can we not sensibly debate these issues?

Mmmm BOP*

Since it's the end of Q1 2012 today, I'd thought it might be time to publish this pretty little chart I put together a few weeks ago:

New Zealand's Balance of Payments (BOP) 2001 - 2011

It's New Zealand's Balance of Payments (BOP) from 2001 - 2011. The green line is the balance of payments itself, which is the sum of the balance on goods and services - the blue line (i.e. exports minus imports) and the balance on income and current transfers - the red line (i.e. money into the country minus money out).

As you can see, the trend was pretty much all in the wrong direction (downwards) until Q2 2008. From then on out exports exceeded our imports, and in Q3 2009 we actually went into surplus for the first time in many years.

It's great to see our exports are now making us more than what our imports are costing us. The red line is now the worrying one. However, it does seem the prosperity of the last decade, especially prior to the pre-GFC recession New Zealand was in by the end of 2008, shows our worrying tendancy to borrow up large during a boom and spend on housing and imports.

*Obligatory 90s pop music reference.

Labour leadership primary

I don't really mind who the next leader of the Labour Party is. Both Davids support a New Zealand republic. Whichever David prevails in caucus, they've certainly got their work cut out for them.

I've heard anecdotal evidence though that the leadership competition has re-energised Labour's membership after a debilitating defeat. Former members who had lost interest in the party have renewed their membership just to attend the series of forums the party has held.

In 1998 a group called the Campaign for Conservative Democracy, despite having an ugly website, succeeded in its campaign to enable "grassroots" to vote on who the UK Conservative Party's next leader should be where the party had more than one candidate for leadership.

The rules weren't enacted until the 2005 leadership contest which saw David Cameron elected as party leader. The campaign re-energised the Conservative party's membership. So, my modest proposal is that Labour amend its constitution so that the next leadership competition where there is more than one candidate, caucus should decide who the top two candidates are, with the final decision to be made by the party membership at large. The Conservatives used a postal vote system. It might sound ironic, but NZ Labour could do well to copy the UK Conservative's leadership rules.

National and the MMP game

So, the final results are out on the MMP referendum - 57.77% of voters voted to keep and review MMP. As readers will know, I haven't been updating this blog because of the general election and referendum campaign. For the referendum my role was acting as the Auckland spokesperson for the Campaign for MMP, and helped out with the website and back-end database. I'll allow others to perform the post-mortems on the campaign for now, my interest at the moment is getting the centre-right to move on from dumping MMP and start thinking seriously about actually playing the game.

This referendum came about as a result of a series of policy discussions, originally lead by the Chris Finlayson (now Attorney-General), on constitutional issues for National to confront. Following National's horrendous 2002 defeat, three policies were entertained: referendums on a New Zealand republic and the electoral system, and abolition of the Maori seats. 

Needless to say, the referendum on the electoral system and abolition of the Maori seats went ahead as National policy into the 2005 and 2008 elections. The republic did not. I wasn't privy to the reasons why, being just a pimply Young Nat at the time, but my understanding was that there was a feeling that MMP was to blame for National's poor showing. Many believed NZ First and United Future expanded their vote at the expense of National, and were determined to win back that support. 

This showed a fundamental misunderstanding of the electoral system. It led to the referendum we've just had. It is an issue National must now confront unless - to borrow a phrase from the anti-MMP camp - it wants to become the "natural party of opposition". What do I mean by this?

Cathy Odgers, writing in the NBR on the Act Party's fortunes, put it this way:

Under MMP, even the most popular prime minister could only barely scrape a majority, which proves how hard it will be for the centre-right next time if we don’t work intelligently as a collective to structure coalition partners for National on a more coherent and friendly basis.

Cathy suggests National should do a deal with Colin Craig's Conservative Party (or CCCP for short). She's absolutely right - and they should be open and honest about it, as they should've been in Epsom with Act.

National has to play the MMP game much better. Not only that, it must play the game smarter than the opposition. National should agree now with Act that its electorate candidate in Epsom will not campaign for the electorate vote. The National candidate will be able to say so. To do so is not undemocratic, the people of Epsom who support a centre-right government will be able to vote for or against one. No need for cups of tea or wink wink nudge nudge-style politicking.

The underlying problem is, however, that Act is dead politically. John Banks will live on as the last vestige of a once important political party; he will become another Jim Anderton or Peter Dunne type figure. I wouldn't be surprised if he caucuses with the National Party.

Counting CCCP as a party of the centre-right, the overall party votes on the right of New Zealand politics was 51.63% in 2011. Now, I don't like Colin Craig's mix of social conservatism and autarkist economics. In many ways it's the opposite of what I stand for. Nor do I like his opportunist political carpet-bagging party, which seems to be little more than an amalgam of paleo-conservative Actoids, failed Christian politicians and a new immigrants party. But there's no denying the 2.66% of the vote his party received, on the strength of its nationwide campaign, was significant. And in a way it would be good for all the social conservatives to have their own party - especially since most social issues are matters of conscience.

Cathy suggests National should give CCCP a seat. Rodney is the most obvious candidate, since that's where Colin Craig is from. If this is to happen, I'd expect the same sort of open and honest approach I'm calling for in Epsom. But to me, this is just a short-term solution.

A much better strategy would be for National's strategists to work with Craig build a nationwide, grassroots campaign. The aim of this campaign would be to break the 5% threshold (heck, they could make it easier for themselves and lower the threshold to 4%), largely by taking votes off New Zealand First.

Joking aside, New Zealand First's base is largely made up of economic autarkists and assorted Muldoon fanboys (they're almost always boys). They are perfect candidates for voting CCCP. No doubt there will be shenanigans from NZ First members (this guy seems to be the prime candidate) which will damage its brand. But more importantly, so long as Winston Peters is around, John Key and National cannot work with him. That needs to be the message National continues to stress throughout this term.

Should CCCP take 2.4% of the vote off NZ First, Parliament will look very different; Peters would be out again and CCCP would be in. Even if National's vote drops in 2014 (and it almost certainly will following a difficult second-term) having a party to the right able to work with John Key will be the difference between holding or losing the treasury benches.

Back on the block

I'm back blogging, due to a self-imposed exile over the last part of the election and referendum campaigns I was involved with.

There will be posts on both those campaigns later, but for now there's a backlog of things that have backed up over the last few months to get through. First up, spend time with the wife...

Still a promise worth breaking

A discussion paper is circulating among Grey Power members calling for means-testing for pensioners earning more than $80,000 p.a. Grey Power are apparently up in arms with the proposal, which comes from one of its regional branches.

While Grey Power's reaction is not surprising, the Prime Minister has once again re-iterated that he would resign if changes were made to superannuation. Perhaps this is John Key's exit strategy - he must understand that eventually push will come to shove and the retirement age will have to be raised, if the present system is to be sustained. Either that or pensions will have to be cut.

Means-testing isn't a bad idea, but it's simply too expensive to implement, especially when it's much simpler to raise the retirement age (which is something that's hard to fake).

Meanwhile, generation x onward are saving for their retirement.

Should mention this

I'm now a spokesperson for the Campaign for MMP.