0 Trouble at t'mill

Danyl from the Dim-Post blogs on tensions on the Left of the political spectrum:

In the hypothetical Labour/Green/New Zealand First/Mana/Internet Party coalition that voters are being asked to put in charge of the country this election year, its hard to figure out which inter-party relationship is the most poisonous, or who would like to destroy whom the most. But now that Laila Harre’s gone and started pre-releasing Green Party policy on the same day as the Greens and justified it on the basis that she worked for the Green Party for fifteen months, and therefore owns all their intellectual property, somehow, I’m gonna nominate the Green/Internet Mana relationship as, from here on in, probably the most toxic.
What’s the strategy here? The original vision for the Internet Party was that it would be a, y’know, Internet Party, focused on digital issues and changing the government by turning out young non-voters. My guess is that Dotcom’s money has paid for some market research which has found that the number of non-voters passionate about copyright restrictions is close to zero, and that the demographic most sympathetic towards the Internet Party are current Green voters. Harre doesn’t share Dotcom’s interest in digital rights, or his legal problems, so her focus – like any other political leader – is purely on maximising her party vote. Which explains why the Internet Party is now a tiny cannibalistic version of the Green Party.

This of course illustrates the dilemma that the Internet Party, or any other single-issue party for that matter faces. That's one of the reasons why we would never support a Christian political party; political parties need to represent a wide sphere of policy positions. 

And it is indeed bad form for Laila Harre to have flogged policies she developed for the Green Party, then pass them off as her own. That of course is the danger when people flit around between parties like a moth flitting between lightbulbs. Loyalty now seems to be a romantic notion from days gone by.

Readers will remember that some months ago, Russel Norman jetted to Auckland, then took a taxi all the way to Coatesville to urge Herr Dotcom not to start a political party lest he leech votes from the Greens. It would seem that Dr Norman's fears may have been well founded as that's exactly what is happening now as the Greens and MegaMana fight for the same constituency.

Danyl calls it "political biohazard watch". We must all be alert less the toxicity between the Greens and MegaMana leaks out.

0 Trouble at t'mill in Tamaki Makaurau

As if the Labour Party didn't already have enough internal problems, there's a massive shit-fight brewing in Tamaki Makaurau. Radio New Zealand reports:

A former Labour MP for Tamaki Makaurau has accused the Labour Party president of abusing her power over the Shane Taurima case. It follows a request from the Tamaki Makaurau electorate committee for a review of the Labour national council decision not to let Mr Taurima stand.
John Tamihere told Morning Report that independent sources have confirmed party president Moira Coatsworth met with another broadcaster, Julian Wilcox.
"It's OK for a president to shoulder tap a high profile candidate or nominee like a Wilcox, but where it goes a bit awry is when you use your authority and power to then skew the scrum completely by taking out a major adversary on the pretext of an error of judgement in his employment" he said.
Mr Tamihere went on to say he believed Mr Taurima had good grounds for a judicial review of the Labour Council decision.

We can just imagine how that's going to go down; a Labour Party electorate committee dragging the party and its president to court just months before the General Election. That's really going to reinforce the notion that Labour is ready to govern; not! The party is at war with itself at the moment.

The RNZ story continues, outlining some pretty deep discontent within the Tamaki Makaurau LEC:

In a statement, the electorate committee said it was disappointed with the decision, and wanted Labour's council to review it. It said it continued to support Mr Taurima as a candidate and would be seeking further advice.
The decision was made after Mr Taurima was found to have used Television New Zealand resources for Labour Party campaigning.
A senior member on the electorate committee Shane Te Pou said there was a lot of hurt stemming from the decision to veto Mr Taurima's candidacy.
He told Morning Report there there was lot of ill feeling on the electorate committee and a lot of patch-up work needed to be done. Mr Te Pou said it was time to move on and it was highly likely nominations for the seat would reopen.

We don't know whether Shane Taurima would have a case for judicial review, given the decision of the Labour Party council. We do know however that Will Flavell, the only nomination to date will have every reason to feel hard done by if nominations are reopened again, and he faces competition for the role of Labour's Tamaki Makaurau candidate.

The Labour Party is a far from happy place at the moment, and this morning's Fairfax-Ipsos poll will have done nothing to lift spirits. There's all sorts of trouble at t'mill.