Geoffrey Miller

New Zealand geopolitical analyst & Arabic/Russian learner

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Politics

A ‘Critic’-al view of ACT – part 2

The main event in Critic this week was an interview with Rodney Hide, on page 39. Despite John Ansell saying this week that with the exception of Hide, ACT’s electorate candidates had “bugger all chance of winning”, Hide still expresses confidence in the ability of Sir Roger Douglas to win the seat of Hunua: Well, the key thing is the party vote but you have to say, the um … [laughs] I’m sure more people know and respect Roger Douglas than have ever heard of [National candidate in Hunua] Paul Hutchison. If Ansell is to be believed (and he has...

Politics

A ‘Critic’-al view of ACT – part 1

I must have felt nostalgic for my alma mater tonight when I entered the URL of Critic, the student magazine of the Otago University Students’ Association (OUSA), into my browser’s address bar. Fortunately, as a free on campus weekly, Critic sees no need to fumble about with clunky “E-Paper” technology and posts each week’s edition as a freely downloadable PDF, including this week’s paper. This week, Critic featured (on page 22) an interview with Warren Jones, the organiser of the Dunedin chapter of ACT on Campus. Jones’s name featured in the acknowledgements of my dissertation, as he was most helpful...

Politics

Why did Ansell leave?

A little less of my day job at the moment leaves a little more time for Douglas to Dancing. And there are plenty of things to comment on. Easily the most significant is the departure this week of John Ansell, essentially a marketing expert who was brought in earlier this year with the aim of sprucing up ACT’s appeal and packaging the party’s policies in more voter-friendly ways. As many will recall, Ansell was responsible for the ideas behind much of National’s advertising (and notably the half/half Labour-National comparison billboards) during the 2005 campaign. Let’s begin with Ansell’s words of...

Politics

Douglas publishes “further reading” to 20 point plan

Sir Roger Douglas has published a 129 page document giving “further reading to ACT’s 20 Point Plan to bring our children home”. See also the pages by Douglas at his campaign website, http://www.roger4hunua.com/. I’m told the file will soon appear at the official ACT website. Commentary to follow.

Politics

Is it Worth trying to face up to Hide online?

A few weeks ago an e-mail came across my inbox from Facebook. This is not remarkable in itself – even fellow occasional social networkers like me will be aware that the form e-mails advising that person XYZ “has added you as a friend” come along as regularly as the sun rises and sets. But this time the person adding me as a friend was no-one other than Richard Worth, National’s candidate (and former Member of Parliament) in Epsom who is again standing, this time to try and unseat Rodney Hide as the local MP. My first concern was to wonder...

Politics

ACT website down

The biggest, juiciest pledge card ever has been replaced by the most frustrating, annoying error message ever…(well probably not that bad but certainly a pain when I wanted to check something just now!). Correct as at 8am on Thursday New Zealand time…

Politics

Time warps, Peter Dunne and ACT

This a “well-strained” post (given that it relates to a comment on a Kiwiblog post about an interview at the Scoop website) but I couldn’t help chuckling at a particularly sharp reader comment about a party which is faring even worse in the polls than ACT: Peter Dunne’s United Future: United Future – the personality cult without a personality. The interview is classic Peter Dunn[e] isn’t it. Sounds oh so reasonable but actually the sum is meaningless. I remember the 1980’s: yes [Sir] Roger [Douglas] was dynamic and exciting. Peter Dunn[e] can never been accused of that….. even then. I...

Politics

What Gerry’s been up to

The ODT reports today that former ACT MP Gerry Eckhoff yesterday voted against the Otago Regional Council funding Dunedin’s new “multipurpose” (read: rugby) stadium to the tune of $37.5 million. This is of course in Eckhoff’s capacity as an ORC councillor. Cr Eckhoff said he could not support the stadium as it would only be used occasionally, with little chance of a financial return for Otago. Followers of ACT will recall that Rodney Hide was involved in a much higher profile anti-stadium campaign in late 2006, when he joined forces with Green MP Keith Locke to protest against the proposed...

Politics

Poll results offer glimmer of hope?

ACT has managed to double its poll results, according to the latest surveys by TVNZ and TV3 out on Sunday. ACT had been down at around 0.3-0.4% in the One News-Colmar Brunton Poll, but had increased that to 1.2% according to Sunday’s figures. On TV3, the party was at 1%, up from 0.5% in the last poll. I think TV3 may round its figures to the nearest whole or half percentage point, so the actual result may have been slightly higher (or lower) than 1%. These results may be no more than a statistical blip, but could it be the...

Politics

Some further thoughts on MMP

I’ve had some feedback on my comments on MMP, including a comment on an earlier post suggesting an STV system replace MMP. But these comments reflect the prejudice against MMP: This I believe would result in a more diverse parliament, with still MP’s such as Jeanette Fitzimmons being elected, and the same for Hide, & perhaps 1 or 2 other ACT MP’s, and even Winston would be represented, but their power would be limited to how many candidates they can get elected by electorates, rather than quirks of the MMP system. Let me emphasise: MMP is not a funny money...

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