Geoffrey Miller

New Zealand geopolitical analyst & Arabic/Russian learner

Tagged: Epsom

Politics

From the front line

An Auckland-based contact e-mailed me the following thoughts on ACT: On the ground, the feel for ACT is quite strange at the moment… ACT clearly gave the impression they are bigger than they are and are polling reasonably (well, around 3% was the ball park figure often given). What’s amazing is how many ACT billboards there are around Auckland, particularly in Epsom. What’s mental is that outside of Epsom, I think ACT has replaced every single former billboard they had a few weeks ago with new ones focusing on crime, etc….They’ve also been HEAVILY direct mailing and leafletting Epsom. This...

Politics

MMP – it takes just TWO ticks

Amidst a lot of the usual pap there are some good gems of information in a Steve Braunias article in today’s Sunday Star-Times. The setting is the campaign trail in Hide’s Epsom electorate: Hide, 51, leader of the Act Party, MP for Epsom, moved along the pavement with pretty little steps and a winning smile on his tanned, tight-skinned dial. He asked: “Vote for me?” He handed out Act leaflets. Few resisted. Many welcomed the chance to shake his hand. He was among friends; when Hide won Epsom in the last election, he beat his opponent, National’s Richard Worth, at...

Politics

Epsom electorate background

Quest for Security has an excellent backgrounder on the history of the Epsom electorate and predicts Hide will win the seat by a landslide in 2008. Barring the unlikely scenario, such as Hide somehow blotting his copy-book in a big way with the “little old ladies” (Hide’s words, not mine) prior to the election, I agree 100% with this assessment. I think the voters of Epsom have got their money’s worth over the last couple of years, as far as Hide being a “good local MP” is concerned. It’s interesting how individual electorates such as Epsom and Tauranga still fascinate...

Politics

Election year underway for ACT

I may have spoken too soon. Since I wrote my last post, the first ACTion member e-mail newsletter for the year has appeared in my inbox, and the party seems to be well underway with election year preparations. The first item of interest is that Rodney Hide will be giving his “Forward Thinking” speech on February 6, i.e. Waitangi Day, to the Remuera Racquets Club in Epsom. This will be at least the second “Forward Thinking” speech given by Hide and seems to have become his “State of the Nation” address. It’s good to see it coming much earlier (six...

Politics

Summer theatre

Bad news. My “prediction” of just a couple of weeks back about John Key announcing a National-ACT deal in his Burnside speech has been dealt a bitter blow (to keep it in TV speak). There won’t be any Burnside speech. According to a report in today’s Dominion-Post, Key will in fact be giving his New Year speech at Ellerslie, with Helen Clark snapping on his heels the next day. Now if it had been Epsom, not Ellerslie, we might have been cooking. But while National and Labour will soon be full of oratory, ACT won’t be. As far as I...

Politics

Stellar candidate on the way?

It might not be Tim Shadbolt, but it sounds like a “stellar candidate” is in the works for ACT this election. I’ve had a tip-off from inside the party that a prominent New Zealander has been recruited to stand for ACT at the election. I don’t know who it is, but an annoucement is apparently expected soon. This may come to nothing, of course: last year the rumour was that ACT was targeting the Rakaia electorate and had almost concluded signing up a prominent local person to stand in the seat. There was no announcement, although to be fair to...

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...

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