Geoffrey Miller

New Zealand geopolitical analyst & Arabic/Russian learner

Tagged: Rodney Hide

Politics

TV debates: MMP, not FPP

News that Helen Clark and John Key are refusing to debate each other with other party leaders has understandably been received with anger by Rodney Hide. Television debates are a major platform for small party leaders to put forward their case to voters. Excluding leaders other than from National or Labour devalues votes given to small parties and only encourages the mistaken view that New Zealand has a presidential system, rather than a proportional, MMP environment. Hide performs well in debates and will be annoyed that he will be robbed of a potential opportunity to swing voters from National in...

Politics

One swallow does not make a summer, but…

As ACT strategist Brian Nicolle emphasised to me in written remarks last year, National has not won an outright majority since 1951 – the year of the waterfront workers’ strike. One could argue that a landslide election victory is well overdue and deteriorating economic conditions (don’t forget, New Zealand, not the United States, is the country halfway to a technical recession) offer fertile ground for a National 50%+ result. But if the rule, rather than the exception, prevails, we should expect National’s support to erode over the next few months as voters seek to “keep Key honest”. Presuming National steps...

Politics

A ‘Critic’-al view of ACT – part 2

The main event in Critic this week was an interview with Rodney Hide, on page 39. Despite John Ansell saying this week that with the exception of Hide, ACT’s electorate candidates had “bugger all chance of winning”, Hide still expresses confidence in the ability of Sir Roger Douglas to win the seat of Hunua: Well, the key thing is the party vote but you have to say, the um … [laughs] I’m sure more people know and respect Roger Douglas than have ever heard of [National candidate in Hunua] Paul Hutchison. If Ansell is to be believed (and he has...

Politics

Why did Ansell leave?

A little less of my day job at the moment leaves a little more time for Douglas to Dancing. And there are plenty of things to comment on. Easily the most significant is the departure this week of John Ansell, essentially a marketing expert who was brought in earlier this year with the aim of sprucing up ACT’s appeal and packaging the party’s policies in more voter-friendly ways. As many will recall, Ansell was responsible for the ideas behind much of National’s advertising (and notably the half/half Labour-National comparison billboards) during the 2005 campaign. Let’s begin with Ansell’s words of...

Politics

Is it Worth trying to face up to Hide online?

A few weeks ago an e-mail came across my inbox from Facebook. This is not remarkable in itself – even fellow occasional social networkers like me will be aware that the form e-mails advising that person XYZ “has added you as a friend” come along as regularly as the sun rises and sets. But this time the person adding me as a friend was no-one other than Richard Worth, National’s candidate (and former Member of Parliament) in Epsom who is again standing, this time to try and unseat Rodney Hide as the local MP. My first concern was to wonder...

Politics

What Gerry’s been up to

The ODT reports today that former ACT MP Gerry Eckhoff yesterday voted against the Otago Regional Council funding Dunedin’s new “multipurpose” (read: rugby) stadium to the tune of $37.5 million. This is of course in Eckhoff’s capacity as an ORC councillor. Cr Eckhoff said he could not support the stadium as it would only be used occasionally, with little chance of a financial return for Otago. Followers of ACT will recall that Rodney Hide was involved in a much higher profile anti-stadium campaign in late 2006, when he joined forces with Green MP Keith Locke to protest against the proposed...

Politics

Hide answering “your questions”

ACT leader Rodney Hide has featured in the “Interview the Leaders” series on left-wing blog The Standard. It’s a fairly useless interview in terms of substance and is indeed so short that I strongly suspect Hide responded via his Blackberry. However, Hide did respond with some more detail on what exactly constitutes ACT’s “Smart Green” policy and we now know that it will include the end of the current Emissions Trading Scheme (i.e. the “cap and trade” model).

Politics

Attacks on ACT from left and right – an Easter bonus for the party?

ACT can be well satisfied with itself this Easter, having caused not one but two attacks on it before the break. To me it sounds like a return to the old days, when ACT caused loathing from both the left and the so-called centre right. During the 1999 election campaign, Bill English called ACT’s policies “unrealistic”. On Thursday he was forced to do much the same, while John Key was scrambling to find a coherent answer to the idea of Douglas becoming a Cabinet minister. The kerfuffle started when Douglas outlined policies he wants to implement should he get the...

Politics

Conference 2008: a tale of two Aucklands

I didn’t see a single Maori or Polynesian face at the conference. A few Asian supporters of former Chinese ACT MP Kenneth Wang sat near me, but even they were thin on the ground. If any proof was needed that ACT is a party of white men, a glance at the conference room today would suffice. Are they rich white men? ACT would beg to differ – indeed today again we were told that “ACT isn’t the party of the rich like the media portray us”. Yet there can be no doubt that many of the attendees were high net-worth...

Politics

Conference 2008: initial impressions

Welcome to Douglas to Dancing‘s extended Conference 2008 coverage. I aim to provide a series of posts over the remainder of the weekend examining the outcomes of the election year conference, held at the Waipuna Lodge in Auckland. Attendance was modest to begin with but steadily built during the morning. Held in a banquet room, probably only around 80-90 were there to hear party president Garry Mallett open the conference at 9am. This figure built throughout the morning, however, and by the time Sir Roger Douglas gave his speech shortly after midday, I estimated closer to 200 people were there....

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