Geoffrey Miller

New Zealand geopolitical analyst & Arabic/Russian learner

geoffreymiller.info

Politics

Radio NZ “bias” – the Coddington connection

An opinion piece by Finlay Macdonald in today’s Sunday Star-Times discusses a survey of New Zealand journalists which apparently found they lean more to the left than right. Are journalists biased? It’s a bit like asking how long a piece of string is you need more information. Nevertheless, the authors of a recent survey of New Zealand newsrooms bravely posed the question of political “orientation” to a self-selected sample of hacks who were asked to rate themselves on a scale from hard left to hard right. The fact that most considered themselves very mildly left or just “neutral” possibly also...

Politics

Hide vs. Mallard

This week, Rodney Hide took a complaint to the Speaker about the scuffle between Labour minister Trevor Mallard and National MP Tau Henare, in which the former admitted assaulting the latter, as NZPA reported: ACT leader Rodney Hide says he will go to the police if his privileges complaint over the stoush between Trevor Mallard and Tau Henare goes unheard.Mr Hide said last week he would lay a breach of privilege complaint with Speaker Margaret Wilson over the altercation which saw Mr Mallard punch Mr Henare. Hide has posted his full letter to Wilson at his blog. In keeping with...

Politics

Gerry Eckhoff and the “Country Party”

Until today, I thought Gerrard (Gerry) Eckhoff was a loyal ACT trooper, even though he lost his seat at the 2005 election. At the 2007 annual ACT conference in March, which I attended as part of my research, Eckhoff loomed large and gave a rather entertaining, if at times confusing speech on “environmental morality”. But it seems that we now have to add Eckhoff to the growing list of former MPs who have expressed misgivings about the new direction of ACT. In today’s Otago Daily Times an “op-ed” piece written by Eckhoff appeared, headlined “Time to take a Country Party...

Politics

Leighton Smith

The preoccupation with medical stories on Nine to Noon means that I sometimes flick on to Newstalk ZB in the mornings, where Leighton Smith reigns supreme. Today I heard Smith advocating school “vouchers”, whereby parents take funding to their school of choice. This competitive system has long been a cornerstone of ACT policy, with MPs Donna Awatere-Huata and later Deborah Coddington particularly in favour of it. I wonder if ACT will bring out schemes like the voucher system once again. The “economisation” of politics over the last couple of years, in which Labour and National have argued about the merits...

Politics

ACT and Local Body Elections

The Local Body Elections earlier this month provide a number of talking points relevant to ACT. Firstly, former ACT MPs Gerry Eckhoff (now a councillor on the Otago Regional Council) and Penny Webster (Mayor of Rodney District) successfully entered local politics. I’ll look at them in more detail later. The second link to ACT is more oblique, but no less interesting. Since 2006, Rodney Hide has concentrated on changing his aggressive image, as he emphasised to me when I interviewed him in August 2007: What I’ve found since 2005, and this was in a response to what members wanted, is...

Act billboard 2005

Politics

Welcome to Douglas to Dancing!

Welcome to Douglas to Dancing. The aim of this blog is to provide a forum for discussion and analysis of the ACT New Zealand political party, about which I wrote my Honours dissertation during 2007 at the University of Otago. On these pages I will highlight key findings from my research and comment on ACT’s 2008 election campaign, as well as simply examining anything relating to ACT. In the coming weeks I plan to look at how ACT is using new technology and what has happened to ACT’s MPs, past and present. For now, I encourage anyone interested in ACT...

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