Geoffrey Miller

New Zealand geopolitical analyst & Arabic/Russian learner

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Politics

Ultimus inter pares – part II

Reviews, committees, discussions, aims, aspirations, considerations, concepts, Commissions, working groups, taskforces, briefings, advisory groups… Perhaps you shouldn’t expect too much from an agreement that was patched together in a week. Attention to detail was obviously not a priority for an agreement which thought the formal name for ACT was “The ACT Party” (to be fair, this is listed as an acceptable abbreviation by the Electoral Commission, but the full name is ACT New Zealand). Well, we didn’t get too much. The document reads more like a set of aims for students sitting an NCEA Level 1 exam than the list...

Politics

Ultimus inter pares – part I

Minister of Local Government Minister of Regulatory Reform Associate Minister of Commerce + Minister of Consumer Affairs Associate Minister of Defence Associate Minister of Education + Reviews, committees, discussions, aims, aspirations, considerations, concepts, Commissions, working groups, taskforces, briefings – Roger Douglas = A great deal for the National Party. Over the past week ACT has been successfully cornered by a cunning John Key. Overtly, Key has told New Zealand that the reason he wanted to draw in the Maori Party and United Future – even though their participation is technically unnecessary – is to build an “inclusive” government. But the...

Politics

Consumer Affairs for Heather Roy

Courtesy of the Dominion-Post, we learn that ACT’s deputy leader Heather Roy will be made Minister of Consumer Affairs. The paper asked Consumers’ Insitute head Sue Chetwin for comment and as she used to be a journalist and editor of both major Sunday papers, her insights are certainly worth noting: ACT itself is not strong on consumer issues in terms of country-of-origin labelling and some of the things we’re interested in. But regulations around financial advisers and a lot of that stuff that’s happening now, I think she’d be very good. Chetwin’s view is a balanced one. To a certain...

Politics

Coalition agreements

ACT will not be going into formal coalition with National. This is because ACT does not want to risk losing its independence from National and wants to be able to vote against the many aspects of National policy with which it disagrees. Instead, it will gain one or ministers outside Cabinet and negotiate some policy compromises with the National Party. The near-absence of formal coalition agreements from New Zealand politics now seems to have become cemented. The 2005-2008 Progressive Party-Labour coalition may have been the last we will see. But why not have a formal coalition agreement? Germany, on whose...

Politics

Commerce portfolio for Hide?

Dene Mackenzie suggests in today’s ODT that Rodney Hide may be made Minister of Commerce to conduct a review of legislation: Mr Hide could become commerce minister, responsible for a review of regulation. He will not be given law and order or energy given Act’s “three strikes and you are out” policy and his call to dump the “dopey emissions trading scam [scheme]”. This could also mean that ACT gets its Regulatory Responsibility Bill passed as one of its contributions to the new government. The Herald reports that ACT is still keen to find a role for Douglas. But not...

Politics

The new world

In just four days we gained a US President-elect and an NZ Prime Minister-elect. If Phil Goff succeeds Helen Clark as Labour leader as expected, for the first time since 1993 both of New Zealand’s main parties will be headed by men. And Sir Roger Douglas is back in Parliament. Welcome to the new world. First, let me offer congratulations to ACT for an impressive comeback. And congratulations to the 10 people who correctly predicted in this site’s poll about a month ago that the party would gain a result in the 3-4% band. While ACT’s number of MPs not...

Politics

That’s it – for now

Unless there is an earth-shattering piece of news before midnight tonight, that concludes Douglas to Dancing‘s election campaign coverage. Of course I’ll be back after election night to analyse and interpret ACT’s fate. My thanks to everyone who has offered constructive criticism and feedback on my posts. LATEST – FINAL WORD ON THE POLLS: the Roy Morgan poll just out also puts ACT at 4% support of the party vote. ACT should be very disappointed if it gets anything less than 3%. Because newspaper polls today showed National at close to 50%, ACT could well prosper further, as National supporters...

Politics

The difference a year makes…

Some highlights from the transcript of my interview with Rodney Hide, August 2007: “I mean my view of Roger Douglas is, he’s a great guy, but he’s always bagged his own team, he’s done that his entire life in politics, and so he’s continued, he bagged ACT and me and Richard from the time we got to Parliament, so there’s nothing new in that.” “So we’ve got to make ourselves relevant and new and also position ourselves better in an MMP environment, as compared with a tactical appendage to National” “I think we have changed ACT totally, no longer a...

Politics

The Guts of a Decent Slogan

TV3 has run a slogan competition via its election website. I’ve collated the ACT-related ones and grouped them into and anti- and pro-ACT categories (in some cases this is hard to tell!). The anti ones are first because there are more of them and they’re much funnier. Anti-ACT: Personal favourite: Vote for ACT: Rodney needs something to do between reality TV gigs. We’re going to party like its still 1979 action against Winston Peters backfired! but Rodney Hide still thinks he is right…YEAH RIGHT! Personal favourite (this was submitted as applying to all parties; the bad grammar just adds to...

Politics

The final chapter

Clearly, the new strategy has at least as many pitfalls as strengths. But as a party which recorded just 1.5 per cent of the party vote at the last election, ACT New Zealand has little to lose. Moreover, it is difficult to find fault with the party for attempting to address in a serious way the very problems I found to be causes of its past lack of success. Since the 2005 election, Hide has made comprehensive attempts to change ACT’s policies, brand and to make the party matter to voters. Ultimately, only ACT’s performance in the 2008 election will...

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