Aotearoa Newzealand Politics: Roads of National party significance

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exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJfDWqOFGAg

Tēnā koutou, welcome to the Aotearoa Newzealand politics thread.

2018 thread | 2015 thread | 2012 thread | 2011 thread | 2010 thread

What is Aotearoa Newzealand politics ?

Aotearoa Newzealand is a country of about 5.1 million people. It�s a unicameral parliamentary democracy, with the Prime Minister leading the government. The head of state is King Charles 3, represented in-country by a basically ceremonial Governor-General. An important constitutional document is Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the 1840 treaty between European settlers and rangatira Māori that established government by the British Crown, while retaining sovereignty for Māori. Spoiler: some promises got broken !!!

A general election is held every three years, using a mixed-member proportional (MMP) voting system. You get two votes: one for your local representative (electorate MP) and one for your preferred party. There are 65 general electorates and seven Māori electorates � people with Māori ancestry can choose to vote on the general electoral roll or the Māori roll. Parties can enter Parliament by either winning an electorate seat or getting 5% of the party vote.

Highly recommend this 90s documentary about the first MMP election in Wellington Central. Insane drama:
https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/campaign

The 120 seats in Parliament are filled by the 72 winning electorate MPs, then extra MPs from each party�s candidate list until proportionality with the party vote is achieved. Coalition governments are the norm � in 2020, a successful Covid response resulted in the first outright majority under MMP, but the Labour Party still invited the Greens into a quasi-coalition arrangement.

The current parliament looks like this:

Who are the main characters ???

Chris Hipkins is the leader of the Labour Party and current Prime Minister. He�s a close friend and ideological ally of Jacinda Ardern, who quit being PM in early 2023. At this stage he hasn�t done much to differentiate himself from her beyond some superficial changes in messaging, but it�s still early days. Labour is the big centre-left social democratic party and has held government since 2017. They were doing pretty badly in the polls, but have bounced back to be pretty much neck and neck with the National Party since Hipkins took over.

Christopher Luxton is the leader of the National Party. He�s a former airline CEO and doesn�t appear to have any personal politics beyond vague social conservatism. Less popular with the public than his party is, but he replaced a series of freaks and dopes as leader so I guess he still looks good by comparison. National is the big centre-right liberal conservative party, supported by farmers and business types. They�ve had recent polling success by talking about crime and supposed wasteful government spending.

Marama Davidson and James Shaw are the co-leaders of the Green Party and Ministers in the current government. They supposedly represent the social justice and climate change wings of the party (respectively). The Greens are a pretty solidly left-wing party now, having jettisoned most of the antivax and �the environment is above left and right� stuff around a decade ago. They�ve done a good job avoiding getting swallowed up by Labour, but a bunch of their diehard supporters are mad because they haven�t managed to achieve an ecosocialist society over the past three years via zero-leverage electoralism. Doesn�t make a lot of sense to me, but whatever.

David Seymour is the leader of the ACT Party. He�s a nasty little worm who managed to increase his party�s vote share by 1,500% between 2017 and 2020. ACT is a far-right libertarian party that loves race baiting, climate change denial, guns, being tough on crime, and reheating American culture war narratives.

Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer are the co-leaders of Te Pāti Māori. They�ve managed to rejuvenate their party following a pretty sad decline, and re-entered Parliament in ~~2017~~ 2020 by winning the seat of Waiariki off Labour. Te Pāti Māori is an indigenous rights party, and they�ve had much more of an activist bent under the current leadership. Couldn�t find any pics of the leaders eating or drinking.

The rest

None of these parties are going to make it into Parliament:

New Zealand First was historically a conservative�centrist kingmaker party and Winston Peters is still a charismatic mf, but ACT has stolen all their voters.
TOP is a party full of centrist technocrat morons. Will never get into Parliament because there just aren�t enough tech guys.
The New Conservatives are busy doing American-style evangelical conservative stuff afaik. Bathroom sickos etc.
There are also half a dozen or so conspiracist parties that might get uncomfortably close to the 5% threshold if they could all work together, but they can�t so they won�t.

There�s an election happening? What are the big issues ?????

It�s happening on 14 October 2023 and could go either way. The 2020 election was a total aberration � Jacinda�s popularity gave Labour a party vote majority and caused a bunch of solid blue seats to flip red. Those are all going to go back to National this year, but it�s also hard to predict whether the bellwethers will stick with their 2020 Labour incumbents.

Some particular electorate races of interest:

Maungakiekie, East Coast, Wairarapa, and Hutt South are held by new Ministers who won them from National in 2020. At this point my guess is they�ll probably stay red, but a lot can change before the election.
Rawiri Waititi is going to win Waiariki again, and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer will almost certainly win Te Tai Hauāuru this time (especially with Speaker Adrian Rurawhe going list-only). They could pick up another seat too.
Green MP Chl�e Swarbrick�s national profile, meme magic, and National-friendly background (law degree, small business owner) led her to take Auckland Central from them in in 2020. Assume she�ll probably keep it in 2023? idk. This time, the Greens are also running serious campaigns in two of the greenest electorates in Aotearoa Newzealand�s greatest city: senior MP and former Minister Julie Anne Genter is standing in Rongotai, and sitting councillor Tamatha Paul is standing in Wellington Central. Neither seat has a Labour incumbent standing and both candidates have a pretty high profile, so they should be ones to watch.

The big issues:

Cost of living: like pretty much everywhere else, Covid and the war on Ukraine have led to high inflation, followed by high interest rates. Jacinda timed her resignation (and laid the groundwork) to enable Hipkins to announce his government�s refocus on cost of living issues. National had been slamming the government on this issue, and are still trying to whip up public anger with dubious claims of wasteful spending. Political management around the cost of living is going to be even more complicated now, thanks to the need for�
Cyclone recovery: Cyclone Gabrielle laid waste to the north and east of the North Island in February, leaving thousands of people homeless amid existing housing shortages, and causing billions of dollars of damage to infrastructure and agricultural land (something like 90% of Northland�s kūmara crop has been wiped out, for example). The recovery is going to be long and complex, and more expensive than for the 2010-11 Canterbury earthquakes. The devastation to export agriculture products will also lead to increased food prices domestically. It�s also put the spotlight on�
Climate change: the cyclone is accelerating the government�s work on issues like managed retreat, which are inevitably going to be polarising. The right-wing parties� new strategy is to argue for adaptation over emissions reduction (which has been much of the government�s focus since 2017). There are going to be really difficult choices � it�s hard to imagine the government progressing agriculture emissions pricing for farmers who have just lost everything, for example.
Crime: disaffected kids keep stealing cars and ram-raiding shops. There�s a load of public hysteria about it, and now about a few incidences of looting in the worst cyclone-affected areas.
Co-governance: it�s become a catch-all scaremongering term for anything the government does to reduce inequities for Māori or realise elements of Te Tiriti. Pretty much just racism, but the government also failed to shape the narrative around it.
China: Aotearoa Newzealand has successfully navigated its relationships with both China (our most important trading partner) and the FVEY countries (our white friends) to date, but this is being challenged by the US�s increasingly aggressive moves in the Pacific. Definitely seems like our foreign policy is hardening, and we�re strengthening our neocolonial role amongst smaller Pacific nations.

Wow! Where can I find out more ???????

Our media landscape is really small and incestuous and they do a bunch of content sharing.

Stuff � Largest and best news website.
NZ Herald � Editorially right-wing, Auckland focus, unusable website.
RNZ � Public broadcaster. Pretty good, but used to be better. Mediawatch is still the best news product in the country.
The Spin Off � Centrist Auckland middle class handwringing, riddled with awful advertorials.
Newsroom � Fair to good in-depth journalism, plus the worst opinion section I�ve ever seen. Very funny comments policy.

Happy posting!

exmarx fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Mar 11, 2023

# ¿ Mar 11, 2023 02:35

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 01:27

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

Ghostlight posted:

Fourth best op

how far things have come...

# ¿ Mar 11, 2023 03:06

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

whoops, fixed. thanks for endorsing the bit about chl�e 👍

# ¿ Mar 11, 2023 04:55

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

bike tory posted:

- Already the second* largest Green party electorate in the country thanks to a high proportion of their core demographics: students, rainbow community, the arts community, and wealthy educated liberal pākehā

*third in 2020, and fourth in 2017

# ¿ Mar 11, 2023 05:35

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

Confusedslight posted:

Is Roy Morgan a somewhat reliable poll?

nope

# ¿ Mar 11, 2023 07:53

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

they're not reliable about confusedslight's question: accurately measuring public support for the greens

# ¿ Mar 11, 2023 08:42

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

interesting that they're trying a civil unions → marriage equality move for lowering the voting age

# ¿ Mar 13, 2023 07:39

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

cptn_dr posted:

Man I generally appreciate Bernard Hickey's take on things but his constant "a vote for the Greens is wasted as long as the Greens will never credibly side with National, because even if Labour needs them for a coalition they have nothing to bargain with if they wouldn't side with National" thing is utterly braindead.

he's extremely dumb in general

# ¿ Mar 14, 2023 06:21

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

it's pretty funny. the loser wing loves the greens' handwringing consensus-based internal politics, but then expects their elected mps to get massive legislative wins without making any compromises.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2023 06:54

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

i've rly got no patience with people who have a deep political involvement in trying to get mps elected but zero understanding about how government works...

# ¿ Mar 14, 2023 08:56

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

they'd have way more influence in cabinet

# ¿ Mar 14, 2023 19:49

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2023 10:30

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

Serephina posted:

Like, is improving transport infrastructure antithetical to which party exactly? Keeping household pets from demolishing local fauna might be a Green party issue, but if that makes them left, who's opposing that on the right? (As much as I'm anti-National I don't think they've taken that line.)

these are examples of vague policy outcomes, not ideological positions.

should transport infrastructure be improved by selling it off to more efficient private operators and letting them set tolls, or by nationalising fulton hogan and downer into a new ministry of works? what does "improving" transport infrastructure mean � making things faster for private vehicles? expanding the range of mode options available to people? should the government incentivise remote communities in tairāwhiti to relocate away from natural hazards so that transport investment can be focused on high-population centres, or does the state have a duty to enable people to keep living on their whenua? how should infrastructure financing be shared between central and local government?

# ¿ Mar 18, 2023 02:38

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/486252/analysis-hipkins-needs-nash-for-swing-voters-at-election

another genius article from the rnz pod cast guy

# ¿ Mar 18, 2023 09:24

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

that's not what they said at all though

# ¿ Mar 19, 2023 01:55

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

henry cooke wrote a good piece on this

https://twitter.com/henrycooke/status/1635737509161213957

# ¿ Mar 19, 2023 06:13

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

doonesbury should be banned lol

# ¿ Mar 19, 2023 10:26

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

the greens haven't been in coalition :smuggo:

# ¿ Mar 20, 2023 01:22

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2023 08:17

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

my personal opinion about that british freak is that nz should have an extremely high bar for doing border hawk stuff, and more pressure should have been put on venues to cancel instead.

it was insane when inz banned odd future, who probably did have a stronger direct role in causing violence at concerts. on the other hand, those canadian neo-nazis should have been banned bc lauren southern literally helped to try drown refugees.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2023 06:46

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

well hopefully patrick gower won't do a handjob interview this time

# ¿ Mar 22, 2023 06:58

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

https://twitter.com/MayorAuckland/status/1638723759376044033

# ¿ Mar 23, 2023 06:50

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

hell pizza in the bookmarks bar much

# ¿ Mar 24, 2023 11:42

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

interesting hat

# ¿ Mar 24, 2023 23:14

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

incredible sign

# ¿ Mar 24, 2023 23:30

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

Confusedslight posted:

Two uk singers and one of them was a judge on new zealands got talent show and she was weirdly nasty to a contestant and ended up getting fired for that and also the country really didn't her. If my memory is serving me right! Anyone is free to correct me.

I don't remember the names sorry.

willy moon is an aotearoa newzealander, natalia kills is british

neither of them did anything wrong

# ¿ Mar 25, 2023 13:17

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2023 03:01

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

extremely good wayne

# ¿ Mar 27, 2023 08:40

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

lol this today fm stuff is wild

# ¿ Mar 30, 2023 00:05

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

wrong on both counts

https://www.mbie.govt.nz/business-and-employment/employment-and-skills/employment-legislation-reviews/holidays-act-review/

# ¿ Mar 31, 2023 11:40

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

A+ browser extension

# ¿ Mar 31, 2023 23:55

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

https://i.imgur.com/G2wkQTd.mp4

# ¿ Apr 6, 2023 05:06

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

it's crazy that no one's pointing fingers at sharon stewart over the auckland floods

# ¿ Apr 12, 2023 10:24

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/13-04-2023/three-waters-kiwibuild-and-the-limits-of-branding

article premised on dumbo journalists not knowing that "three waters" has been used as a shorthand for like a decade

# ¿ Apr 12, 2023 23:09

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

https://twitter.com/haydendonnell/status/1646327364530364420?s=46&t=z-BpKV_zuayDXrjUW20mQw

# ¿ Apr 14, 2023 05:37

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

rnz got given the government-funded media tag lol

# ¿ Apr 17, 2023 08:01

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

Green Party sources accuse MP Elizabeth Kerekere of 'bullying' https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/488141/green-party-sources-accuse-mp-elizabeth-kerekere-of-bullying

👀

# ¿ Apr 17, 2023 21:23

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

someone leaked them to the media

# ¿ Apr 17, 2023 21:32

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

too many small businesses

# ¿ Apr 20, 2023 03:00

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 01:27

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

why is hosking british

# ¿ Apr 20, 2023 03:06

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Aotearoa Newzealand Politics: Roads of National party significance

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