Geoffrey Miller

New Zealand geopolitical analyst & Arabic/Russian learner

Tagged: Matt McCarten

Politics

11 “game-changers” which weren’t for the 2014 New Zealand election

1. Advance voting Gareth Hughes at The Daily Blog, 2 September 2014 I believe advance voting will be a game-changer this Election. Young Kiwis in particular are notorious for voting in low numbers but this Election it doesn’t matter what the weather is like on September 20, how big the lines are, or if there’s something else on – everyone can vote from tomorrow or any day over the next seventeen days. Elections always take place on a Saturday to minimise disruption to the working week. But for young Kiwis, many of whom work part-time jobs on a Saturday (or...

Politics

Conference 2009: Deborah Coddington

It’s safe to say that Deborah Coddington hasn’t been ACT’s greatest cheerleader in recent years. Even when she was an MP, she wasn’t one to mince words, calling Richard Prebble’s stunt-like suggestion in 2004 that ACT merge with National in the wake of Don Brash’s Orewa speech “disastrous”. In 2007, Coddington criticised Hide for being “rapt in his own dancing, flash suits, swimming and catwalk modelling”, instead of promoting policies such as “radical personal tax cuts”. If the criticism from Coddington has in the past been blunt, it is now razor-sharp. In her Sunday newspaper column published during ACT’s conference...

Politics

Strategic voting and ACT

It’s the final week of a fairly lacklustre election campaign by all parties concerned. But if ACT does manage to gain an extra MP or two, it may well be due to “strategic voting” taking place. I take strategic voting to mean voting for a party for a reason other than, or in healthy addition to, agreement with its policy. I’ve previously argued that ACT should give up trying to convince voters to become neo-liberals and gain supporters for pure tactical reasons. Earlier in the campaign, we saw ACT reintroduce the tired, but sometimes profitable tough-on-crime stance. Perhaps precisely because...

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