Geoffrey Miller

New Zealand geopolitical analyst & Arabic/Russian learner

Tagged: Don Brash

Parliament buildings, Wellington.

Politics

New Zealand politicians on social media (including Wayne Mapp at The Standard)

This post was originally published at Liberation. MPs past and present in the blogosphere A number of past and present MPs are engaging in social media – blogs, and Twitter in particular. In this blog post,I outline what politicians are communicating online and where. I evaluate their efforts, and report on the latest rightwing ex-politician to enter the comments section of a leftwing blog. #106540172 / gettyimages.com This post was inspired by an innocuous-looking reader comment by “Wayne” at leftwing blog The Standard on the blogpost, Cunliffe declares war on National and the TPPA. Here are the comments: Wayne 8.1.1.3 17 September 2013...

Politics

Winners and losers in the Act Party leadership coup

This blog post was originally published at Liberation The New Zealand political landscape changed in some major ways with the extraordinary coup by Don Brash for the leadership of the Act Party. Who wins from this unusual changing of the guard? Long-time Act-watcher, Geoffrey Miller, argues in this guest blog post that the ‘winners’ to come out of the coup are Don Brash, John Key, John Banks, Aaron Bhatnagar, Phil Goff, Hilary Calvert, and the Coastal Coalition. And the ‘losers’ are Rodney Hide, John Key, John Boscawen, Brian Nicolle, and Reform New Zealand. Blogger Whaleoil has already come up with...

Politics

National, Act, Brash and Orewa

This blog post was originally published at Liberation On 27 January 2004, Don Brash, then leader of the National Party for just a few months, gave a speech to the Orewa Rotary Club on what he called ‘the dangerous drift towards racial separatism’ in New Zealand. In his speech, Brash advocated the abolition of the Maori seats, an accelerated Treaty of Waitangi settlements process and the removal of ‘divisive race-based features from legislation’. The word Orewa is of course still strongly associated with Brash today. In his interview with John Campbell on Wednesday (27 April 2011), Brash was asked whether...

Politics

Don Brash’s move from National to Act

This blog post was originally published at Liberation Don Brash’s current bid for the leadership of the Act Party is viewed as a National Party takeover of the minor party – because Don Brash is an ex-leader of National.  However, in reality Brash has always been seen as more aligned with the ideologies of Act – after all, when he was a National MP he was dubbed ‘Act’s tenth MP’. So, is Don Brash naturally more of an Act Party politician than a National Party one? And if so, why didn’t he join Act in the first place, and not...

Politics

Don Brash – a new hope or an old headache for the Act Party?

This blog post was originally published at Liberation ‘Don Brash clearly believes he can do Mr Hide’s job.  Equally clearly, many of his colleagues do not – as yet.  If they were really confident Dr Brash was up to it, he would have been installed as leader by the end of this week, so wretched has been Mr Hide’s performance.  But Dr Brash is not of a mind to get the message.  For the party’s sake, he should have done one of two things. Either organised his putsch with absolute secrecy until the deed had been done. Or issued a...

Politics

Douglas’s Orewa speech

Having been selected by Don Brash as the “greatest living New Zealander”, Sir Roger Douglas has made his way to the former’s favoured speaker’s corner: the Orewa Rotary Club. He brought with him a “new” tax plan – essentially yet another reworking of the ideas which have circulated since the publication of Unfinished Business in 1993. Reading the report in today’s New Zealand Herald, under the new plan, the first $30,000 of income would be “tax free” in return for paying for one’s own health insurance, retirement and welfare costs. Above the $30,000, a flat tax rate of 15% would...

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

Kenneth Wang – a dream candidate?

The results of the Douglas to Dancing online poll are in. Of course, I don’t claim that the poll results are in any way scientific. The fact is that 13 people responded. While this is by no means a high number, this is a niche blog! So let’s look at the results as an indication of the people most interested in ACT – they might not be ACT voters (although I’m sure many will have been), but they’re keen enough to vote in an online poll. It seems that Kenneth Wang is the preferred dream candidate of respondents. Wang is...

Politics

Populism on the rise again – an opportunity for ACT?

Populism seems to be on the rise again in New Zealand politics. Today we had Helen Clark declaring a virtual war on tagging with draconian, yet ineffective policies to deal with spray-paint vandalism. The chances of this sort of policy, which includes banning the sale of spray-paint to youths under 18, actually working hover slightly above nil. But it’s a popular policy to push to the electorate: 1. Tagging is a bane of the (mostly white) middle class. It gets people riled in a way that banging on about “sustainability” never will. Tagging is emotional, as it gets to the...

Politics

Summer speeches 2008: why it’s not the economy, stupid

First, a Dominion-Post/David Farrar-style evaluation of my “predictions” made a few weeks back on the highest trafficked post on this blog to date: The date was correct Duncan Garner reported for 3 News Even Hilary Barry was back from her holiday But apart from John Key being the man giving the speech, that’s about it. The speech was at Ellerslie, not Burnside, and the topic had nothing remotely to do with ACT. Quelle surprise! But Key’s speech on Tuesday morning nevertheless held some interesting talking points with regards to ACT. The media have universally reported the speech as being solely...

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