Geoffrey Miller

New Zealand geopolitical analyst & Arabic/Russian learner

Tagged: FDP

Politics

Time for a save MMP campaign?

[text-blocks id=”act-party”] New Zealand must be the only country in the world which has a government coalition partner (the Progressive Party) with absolutely no popular support. From the 1000 voters polled in the latest Herald-DigiPoll, not one named the Progressives as the preferred recipient of their party vote. Please don’t get me wrong: this certainly isn’t intended as a criticism of Jim Anderton’s party per se. ACT itself had just 0.4% – “translated” (as Guyon Espiner would say), this means just 4 voters of the thousand polled selected ACT. Noting this, the post I could write now is that Douglas’s...

Politics

Populism on the rise again – an opportunity for ACT?

[text-blocks id=”act-party”] 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...

Politics

Epsom electorate background

[text-blocks id=”act-party”] 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...

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