0 MegaMana steals more Green policy

Yesterday the clean rivers policy Laila Harre had written for the Greens became Internet Party policy. And today, Ms Harre is sounding like Gareth Hughes; the Herald reports:

The Internet Party wants a moratorium on what it calls "risky energy and mining industry practices" such as fracking, dumping of oil wastes and deep-sea and undersea extraction.
In its final environment policy released today the internet Party also sought to restore the "absolute right" of New Zealanders to protest at sea against deep-sea oil exploration.
"National has been pushing New Zealand towards a greater dependence on the extractive industries at a time when climate change and land and water protection demand the opposite," said internet Party leader Laila Harre.
"We will place moratoria on the hydraulic fracturing of oil and gas wells, and deep-sea drilling. The direct safety risks of these industries have not been adequately investigated or managed.
"Their impact on climate change would also have to be countered before any resumption of these activities would be considered. In the case of deep sea drilling we do not see any likelihood that benefits to New Zealand will be shown to outweigh the risks."

The cost of an accident to New Zealand's marine and coastal environment would be simply too high, she said.

We wonder if Ms Harre has ever discussed these policies with her paymaster, the Large German Gentleman. After all, all those computers that Herr Dotcom has must have consumed a good slice of mineral resources in their construction.

And just think of Dotcom's transport habits. He's definitely more fond of helicopters and Hummers than he is of hybrids, so how is mimicking Green Party policy on fracking, even if it was drafted by Laila Harre consistent with Dotcom's fossil fuel excesses?

Quite why MegaMana is targetting Green voters with its policies is anyone's bet. The Green vote is not a huge slice of the market, and two into one doesn't go, so someone is going to be disappointed.

It's little wonder that Danyl from the Dim-Post described Ms Harre's provocative actions as "Political biohazard watch". We don't think it's going to be long before Gareth Hughes is going to be calling for a moratorium on MegaMana!

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 Eat your Greens Kim!

Rod Emmerson's been reading the Herald. In particular, he's read the bit in the Herald-DigiPoll about MegaMana eating into the Green Party vote:

This is great stuff from our favourite cartoonist. But before eating too many Greens, Dotcom ought to make sure that there's no organic "residue" on the leaves.

0 Jones on Dotcom's "pretend party"

Bob Jones is in fine form this morning in his weekly NZ Herald column. Under the headline Dotcom, your no-hopers won't save you Jones opines:

My urging John Minto to shut up and acquire a hobby induced his response claiming he once thrashed me in a Victoria University debate (I've never debated him or indeed anyone at Vic) and challenging me to debate with him publicly on any of a wide range of subjects.
As I, like everyone else, want him to shut up, I'd hardly provide him more oxygen by doing that. Minto repeated this in a letter to me. I replied by helpfully suggesting he could satisfy his pathetic craving for attention by putting on a one-man black and white minstrel show and suggested he start practising singing Swanee River.
And given his life-long socialist belief in spending others' money, I offered to buy him his banjo and face-paint. He would have gone down a treat in old folk's homes, but acting altruistically in a meaningful way is alien to him, aside from which there's the awkward need to smile, so instead he's shamelessly joined Dotcom's pretend party.

Dangle money before hardened lefties and they'll sit up and purr every time.

Bob Jones hits the nail on the head here (sorry Rex). The political Left loves money, especially when it belongs to the long-suffering Someone Else. That is the only reason why the Mana Party has agreed to the MegaMana rort deal; Dotcom's money.

Of course, it matters not to Hone, Laila, Annette and John where the money came from; Jones continues:

Kim Dotcom was granted residency in November 2010 under the "investor plus" category, despite his past offending in Germany, his persona-non-grata status in Thailand and his minor securities conviction in Hong Kong, the Immigration Service making a marginal judgment call given his expressed investing commitment.
This decision was thereafter supported by his generosity to a range of causes, and he quickly became a larger-than-life, jolly-jumbo figure who brightened our lives. But today, three years later, his world has collapsed and, flailing in desperation, he's become politically involved, something I'm sure he never anticipated given his background of frivolous excess. He's now best described as the Milan Brych of New Zealand politics.
So what went wrong? That's simple: specifically the revelation of his wealth source, namely the large-scale copyright theft of Hollywood movies, which has led to the extradition order by the FBI. Due to preposterously idiotic behaviour of the police, who, instead of knocking on his door and handing Dotcom a summons, mounted a scandalously infantile raid by 76 armed police and two helicopters, then wrongly threw him into prison, the public reaction became hugely sympathetic, more so when it was revealed he had been illegally spied on by the GCSB clowns.
Dotcom's loveable maverick reputation collapsed, despite his vigorous legal efforts to prevent it, once details of the FBI's claim became public. Hitherto he had presented his business as that of an innocent bystander, akin to a taxi driver delivering a passenger to a bank, then subsequently being charged with aiding and abetting a crime after it was found his fare had robbed the bank.
But the FBI claims he had the means to control his Megaupload site's content, but far from doing so, actively incentivised the placement of movies on his site.
In rebuttal, Dotcom points to the terms service users were obliged to agree to, which included an undertaking not to post copyrighted material. He further argues that the sheer volume of material was such as to prevent practical policing.
The user copyright undertaking won't wash in any court and he knows it. It was his primary income source, arising from many tens of thousands of downloading users exploiting his site's stolen movies, but Dotcom, the site owner, implausibly claims this was all unknown to him.
Anyone wrongly charged with a serious crime should be ultra-eager to get into a court and argue their innocence. Instead, Dotcom has wasted millions trying to avoid doing so.
So he has resorted to a final desperation measure, namely to spend millions attempting to buy a change of government, which he hopes will override a court-backed extradition order, an inevitable outcome once he's used up all of his legal ploys.

Dotcom's money is not "clean" money, despite one of the serious criminal charges he is facing in the USA being Conspiracy to commit money laundering. But that won't stop Hone Harawira and his whanau. Their loathing of "rich prick" John Key means that the end justifies the means in getting rid of him, in their eyes. 

Of course that ignores the obvious hypocrisy of taking money from another rich prick, but Dotcom gets a free pass because he despises John Key too. Principles disappear out the window when the cheque book comes out.

Jones closes, with final digs at Dotcom, Harre and Minto:

He's wasting his money as no government will do that, regardless of any undertakings from the soul-selling abysmal no-hopers he has garnered together to fund as a political party. If anything, his efforts will hugely harm the Opposition cause in Balkanising and confusing its message, thus presenting an electoral option with, on one side, a rabble of dissimilar, mutually antagonistic parties, all with unpopular leaders and wildly different messages, set against a stable governing party with the most popular leader in our history.
This is the fifth party Dotcom's new leader, Laila Harre, has belonged to, which speaks volumes. Laila will always be remembered for the funniest political gaffe in our history when she explained her 2002 defeat by lamenting on television that voters had voted with their heads rather than their hearts.
If she wants hearts, then far better she assists Minto with a one-man black and white minstrel act which will pull the punters in droves, but when it comes to heads, like Dotcom, she's history.

Jones is once again quite right. The Herald-DiigiPoll released this morning shows a small rise in support for MegaMana at the Green Party's expense. A congested hard-Left is hardly going to filch votes from the centre, or the centre-right. All that will happen is that the same volume of votes on the Left will be distributed among more parties.

Of course, we're not going to complain about that outcome. It'll be a nice farewell gift to New Zealand from Dotcom as he is jetted off the the USA to face the trial he has tried so hard to avoid. 

0 More poll agony and ecstacy

In three months and three days, New Zealand goes to the polls to elect its 51st Parliament. And if the Labour Party wasn't already worried enough about poll trends, the Herald has heaped more misery on this morning.

The latest Herald-DigiPoll is out, and like other polls in the last couple of months, it's pretty emphatic. Herald deputy political editor Claire Trevett has the details:

The Internet-Mana Party would get two seats in Parliament based on the first major poll since the two parties cut a deal to stand together.
But, three months shy of the election, Labour is still struggling and the left bloc is well adrift from National, which could easily govern alone based on the Herald-DigiPoll survey.
The results for the Mana Party, Internet Party and Internet-Mana Party totalled 1.4 per cent in the survey - a modest start for the newly launched party which was the centre of attention in the lead-up to the polling period.
That is enough to get new Internet Party leader Laila Harre into Parliament if Mana leader Hone Harawira holds his Te Tai Tokerau electorate.
But the votes appear to have been at the expense of the Green Party which dropped to 11 per cent, down 2.5 points since the last Herald-DigiPoll survey in March.

That will worry the Greens, especially if Internet-Mana, bankrolled with $3 million from Kim Dotcom, starts to pick up more momentum.
Polling began on June 6, soon after Mana and Internet agreed to stand as a joint force to try to maximise the number of MPs Mr Harawira could take into Parliament under the "coat-tailing" provisions of MMP.
Although the deal was criticised by many commentators and rival political parties, 39 per cent of those polled said the Internet-Mana arrangement was a legitimate use of MMP while 43 per cent said it was an unprincipled rort.

That MegaMana is starting to cut into the Green vote is no surprise. Readers will remember that when Russel Norman visited Dotcom's rental property at Coatesville last year, he urged the Large German Gentleman to consider not starting a party for that very reason.

But the Greens' worries are small compared to those of Labour; Trevett continues:

With a party vote based on the poll of 50.4 per cent, National maintains a strong lead and is 20 points ahead of Labour which is up one to 30.5 per cent. National would have 64 seats, enough to govern without any support partners and 10 more seats than the left bloc of Labour, the Greens and Internet-Mana.
Labour leader David Cunliffe has rallied slightly, although Labour's efforts to beat the anti-immigration drum just before the poll began do not appear to have had much traction. Labour inched back over the 30 per cent mark and Mr Cunliffe's personal ratings as preferred Prime Minister have nudged up from 11 to 13 per cent since March.
He is still adrift of his high of 17 per cent immediately after his election last September and continues to poll lower than former leader David Shearer did. NZ First was steady on 3.6 per cent - not enough to return to Parliament though its support tends to lift during the campaign.
The poll indicates Prime Minister John Key has escaped the fallout from the trial and resignation of former Act MP John Banks, which broke the day before the poll began. Mr Key held steady at 66 per cent as preferred Prime Minister. Those who believed the Government was heading in the right direction lifted to 56 per cent - the highest since just before the 2011 election.
The poll of 750 eligible voters was taken from June 6 to June 15 and has a margin of error of +/- 3.6 per cent. There were 12.2 per cent undecided voters on the party vote.

This must be terribly discouraging for Mr Cunliffe and his Labour colleagues. They've thrown everything but the kitchen sink at National and Judith Collins in particular, and it's barely made a blind bit of difference. John Key remains the preferred Prime Minister for two thirds of those surveyed, whilst David Cunliffe is the preferred choice of less than one in seven New Zealanders.

And when Parliament resumes this afternoon after a two-week recess, sans John Banks, Labour will be on the defensive again. Instead of being able to attack the Government, Labour has its own donation woes, and if what we were hearing yesterday from a variety of unrelated people is true, yesterday's story is only the tip of the iceberg.

The clock is ticking on Labour. After Friday (i.e. three months out from the election), Labour can change leaders without going to the membership for another Labour's Got Talent tour. Have the polls yet reached the point where they might do a Mike Moore (1990), or will they stick with Mr Cunliffe then cut him adrift after what is looking likely to be a third successive defeat at the polls?

These are interesting times indeed, and the Herald-DigiPoll has just made them a whole lot more interesting!

0 Hide on MegaMana

Our favourite commenter Rex made this observation earlier this morning:

Next job, cut and paste Rodney Hide's rant!

At that point, we hadn't made it as far as the Herald on Sunday's website yet; we were still working through e-mails sent to us overnight bringing things to our attention. And the frequency of that has increased in recent weeks.

But naturally, we went straight off in search of Hide's latest opinion-piece. And we found that he does indeed rip in to all those involved in MegaMana; under the headline Hilarious Dotcom drama is riveting Hide opines:

I used to think politics was all about achieving good government. That proved invariably disappointing. These days, politics is no longer my responsibility. I'm happy if it just proves interesting.
That's why I am for the Internet-Mana Party. They're the best entertainment in years. If they were a parody they would be too improbable to be believed.
Maori nationalist Hone Harawira calls Pakeha the rudest of names and the wrong colour to date his daughter. But he's jumped into bed with whiter-than-white Kim Dotcom.
Harawira trumpets Mana and His People but that's not stopping him using his electorate to coat-tail Dotcom's party into Parliament. His price? $3 million.
It's easy to accuse Harawira of hypocrisy but he has a ready reply: it's a lot of money. At $3m his double standard is good and high.
Laila Harre wasn't elected leader of the Internet Party. She was hired. She's been selected and paid for by Dotcom. The former coffee picker for the Sandinistas is New Zealand's first corporate-hire political leader.
A mate rang after Harre's appointment splitting his sides, "All they need now is Pam Corkery". Corkery was appointed press secretary that day.
Willie Jackson considered standing but wanted $250,000. That's his price for standing up for his principles.

We're grateful to Judge Holden, Edward the Confessor, Rex or whatever else he calls himself for pointing us in the direction of Hide's column, although we would have found it at some point in any event. And we make no apologies for copying and pasting a story that tells the truth of the MegaMana rort in the manner that Hide does.

That's because the rort would be funny, almost beyond belief in fact, if it wasn't such an affront to democracy. 

Hide continues, making a mockery of the notion that MegaMana is going to be some kind of new, visionary force:

The recycled 1990s Alliance Party is promising a digital future. But they're technophobes and Luddites. Harre declares herself well-qualified because her children are the internet generation and her husband uses a computer at work.
She also believes Dotcom is funding her to help the poor and downtrodden with 1970s socialism. It's nothing to do with his extradition to face criminal charges. The left don't talk about truth. Rather, it's the narrative. Harre is the only person buying her narrative.
Next up, Annette Sykes. Her driving force? The Treaty and economic equality. Nothing about Dotcom's over-the-top lifestyle and opulence suggests Treaty concerns or a share-the-wealth mentality.
Someone isn't being upfront about their political aims and aspirations. The gulf between Dotcom and his politicians is altogether too yawning.
Then we have veteran campaigner John Minto. His promise? That Mana is coming after the rich. Capital gains taxes, financial transaction taxes, inheritance taxes and a more progressive tax system are all part of his campaign.
He's targeting the "parasites" and their "unearned income". In the meantime, he's more than happy taking the fat cat's money. That's the money the FBI are accusing Dotcom of not earning.

The Occupy movement in 2011 protested about the "1%"; the parasites and fat cats referred to by Hide. If his repeated boasts about his personal wealth are to be believed, Dotcom is not only part of the 1%, but quite likely in the top 0.25%. 

He is the very kind of person that the likes of Laila Harre, Annette Sykes, Hone Harawira and John Minto have spent their lives condemning, yet when the cheque book comes out, they gladly take his money, and climb into bed with him. Their hypocrisy is breathtaking.

Rodney Hide isn't done yet; he has one final go at Dotcom:

 

Dotcom set out to destroy Banks for not rushing to rescue him from Mt Eden Prison. He expected a minister to jump for a $50,000 political donation. That's his character. Imagine what he expects for $3m.
And imagine how he will perform when he doesn't get it. Pure entertainment.

The day is fast approaching when the REAL Kim Dotcom is going to be unmasked. When that happens, watch for those who have taken his filthy lucre to be unmasked with him for selling their principles for the promise of big bucks.

Hide's final two words are right on the money; it will indeed be "pure entertainment". There are going to be some extremely red faces on the left-hand side of the political divide and we can't wait to see the squirming!

0 What the 2014 General Election is all about...

Mike Treen is the national director of the Unite union. In 2011, he was one of the organisers of a group of unionists supporting the Mana Party. It's safe to say that he is one the far Left of New Zealand politics.

Mr Treen also blogs at Martyn Bradbury's union-funded Daily Blog. And our attention has been drawn by a reader to this paragraph in a lengthy blog-post written by Mike Treen and published yesterday. In one paragraph, he tells readers what the 2014 General Election is all about:

That's right Dear Readers. This election isn't about the economy, about health, education, crime or poverty. It's not even about the trade unions' hoary chestnut of a living wage. Mike Treen has declared that this year's General Election is about Kim Dotcom getting his revenge on the Government.

So forget all the bullshit and rhetoric about the digital economy, and about better access to the internet for everyone; that's just a front. MegaMana is all about a rich convicted criminal, wanted in the USA trying to escape justice, and trying to get his pound of flesh from the Government who allowed US authorities to try and extradite Dotcom.

We suppose we should be grateful to Mike Treen; at least he has called it as it actually is, rather than feeding us sugar-coated bullshit as Dotcom, Hone Harawira and Laila Harre have done. But as the countdown to the election continues, let's not lose sight of the fact that Dotcom is trying to subvert New Zealand's electoral system for his own ends. 

There's a word for that.

Kim Dotcom wants to take his revenge on this government. This is perfectly understandable. He has every reason to do so. In fact, given his treatment, he has more reasons than most. The most effective way for that to happen is for this government to be defeated in the coming election. The Mana-Internet party alliance is the best way to make that happen. He was smart enough to see that. - See more at: http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/06/12/why-the-mana-internet-alliance-is-a-potential-game-breaker/#sthash.hjSfLLzz.dpuf

Kim Dotcom wants to take his revenge on this government. This is perfectly understandable. He has every reason to do so. In fact, given his treatment, he has more reasons than most. The most effective way for that to happen is for this government to be defeated in the coming election. The Mana-Internet party alliance is the best way to make that happen. He was smart enough to see that. - See more at: http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/06/12/why-the-mana-internet-alliance-is-a-potential-game-breaker/#sthash.hjSfLLzz.dpuf

Kim Dotcom wants to take his revenge on this government. This is perfectly understandable. He has every reason to do so. In fact, given his treatment, he has more reasons than most. The most effective way for that to happen is for this government to be defeated in the coming election. The Mana-Internet party alliance is the best way to make that happen. He was smart enough to see that. - See more at: http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/06/12/why-the-mana-internet-alliance-is-a-potential-game-breaker/#sthash.hjSfLLzz.dpuf

Kim Dotcom wants to take his revenge on this government. This is perfectly understandable. He has every reason to do so. In fact, given his treatment, he has more reasons than most. The most effective way for that to happen is for this government to be defeated in the coming election. The Mana-Internet party alliance is the best way to make that happen. He was smart enough to see that. - See more at: http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/06/12/why-the-mana-internet-alliance-is-a-potential-game-breaker/#sthash.hjSfLLzz.dpuf

0 Rudman on coat-tailing

Brian Rudman doesn't hide his contempt for coat-tailing in his latest Herald column. But under the headline Cut off the coat-tails and end MMP rorts he's not exactly kind to the Labour Party and David Cunliffe either; he opines:

Labour is promising to abolish within 100 days of taking office the MMP coat-tail rule that enables a minor party electorate MP to bring party list mates into Parliament regardless of the 5 per cent entry threshold.
The joke is that, barring a miracle, there seems little chance of Labour leader David Cunliffe and his Green allies forming a government without the aid of the Mana-Internet "party", whose existence depends on gaming the coat-tail provisions.
And having exploited the system for all it is worth - and spent more than $3 million of internet millionaire Kim Dotcom's cash - to get back into Parliament, it seems unlikely that Hone Harawira and Laila Harre will turn around and vote to end the fun.
The stitch-up between embattled Mana Party leader Mr Harawira and Mr Dotcom, the millionaire refugee from American law enforcement agencies, is not the first attempt to game the MMP rules. It's just the most egregious.

Rudman is dead right. The deal between Dotcom and Harawira is the rort to end all rorts, and everyone knows it. John Key may invite minor party leaders for a cup of tea, but on the rort scale, the MegaMana one is a five course dinner with wine matches, and port and cigars to follow.

Of course, that won't stop David Cunliffe, if that is what it takes. Faced with a choice of governing and reaching some sort of deal with MegaMana, and facing another three years in opposition, we all know what David Cunliffe will do.

And we all know that Labour has form; read on:

In 1999, in the second MMP election, Labour leader Helen Clark encouraged Labour supporters in Coromandel to support Green candidate Jeanette Fitzsimons to ensure the defeat of the National incumbent and bring in several Green list candidates on her coat-tails.
Ms Fitzsimons narrowly won - but in the end the Greens' party vote just sneaked over the 5 per cent threshhold, entitling them to six seats anyway.

Of course, that's not Labour's only coat-tail rort. From the first MMP election in 1996 to his retirement at the 2011 General Election, Labour stood a series of Neville Nobodies against former Labour Party president and MP Jim Anderton in Wigram. By the time he retired, Anderton was back to being a Labour MP in every way except his self-named political party.

So Labour knows all about coat-tail rorts. But make no mistake; David Cunliffe, for all his pontificating now will reach out to Dotcom and Harawira if that's what it takes after 20 September. Then he will ask the MegaMana MP's to close their eyes, block their noses, and like turkeys, vote for an early Christmas. Labour's hypocrisy is galling. 

0 More Cunliffe hypocrisy

David Cunliffe has declared war on coat-tailing and the Conservative Party; simultaneously. But he's also dug a deep hole for himself; Stuff reports:

Labour leader David Cunliffe has launched an attack on Conservative Party leader Colin Craig amid growing speculation of an electoral deal with National.
Prime Minister John Key told media this week he would be looking to make three deals to give minor-party candidates a chance at winning seats, and would announce them before the September 20 election.
It is widely understood one of those deals would be with Craig, who is set to announce this month the electorate he will be standing in.
Craig has already indicated his preference to stand in one of the northern Auckland electorates - East Coast Bays, which is held by Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully; Upper Harbour, in which National is standing Social Development Minister Paula Bennett; and Rodney, which is held by National back-bench MP Mark Mitchell.
If National gave way for Craig to win a seat and the Conservative's gained more than 1.2 per cent of the vote, an extra two MPs could be brought into Parliament to form a coalition with National.
Cunliffe today said the situation with Craig was a "strange turn of events".
"I wonder whether the people of East Coast Bays like the fact that their choices are being taken away from them, that MMP is being manipulated and they're being told they have to vote for somebody who basically thinks the earth is flat," he said on Firstline.
"That is a very, very strange turn of events and I think it underwhelms public confidence in the MMP system.
"I also think the prime minister should be aware that something like 75 per cent of New Zealanders object to coat-tailing.
"Labour is opposed to coat-tailing, we've got a bill in the House to end it, we've invited the Government to support the bill and so far they've declined. Now we see why - because they want to use coat-tailing to get fringe parties up into Parliament by gifting them a seat, most likely East Coast Bays."

So here's our question to David Cunliffe. If Labour is in a position to form a coalition after the General Election, and if the MegaMana party brought additional MP's into Parliament legally under the current provisions of MMP, would Labour refuse to go into coalition with them?

You see, David Cunliffe has a problem. If coat-tailing is such an urgent problem that legislation must be introduced in the first 100 days of a Labour-led government to outlaw it, surely he cannot accept the votes and support of a party that coat-tails MP's into the House. Or does Mr Cunliffe seriously believe that coat-tailing is only bad when the parties of the Right do it?

So the ball's in your court Mr Cunliffe; you need to categorically rule out any deal or accommodation with the Internet Mana Party including coalition arrangements,  abstaining, and confidence and supply deals. Will you do it?

We reckon the answer to that is self-evident. Labour is all about power at any cost. John Key might be prepared to cut deals, but at least he cuts them out in the open, not in the War Room or the union halls. 

Coat-tailing is either good, or it's bad. But David Cunliffe is being a hypocrite if he thinks he can have a dollar each way.

0 Photo of the Day - 11 June 2014

This arrived unsolicited in our inbox a short while ago:

They say that many a true word is spoken in jest. This is living proof of that saying, even if Hone Harawira hasn't yet cottoned on to the fact that he is now Dotcom's puppet.

0 Quelle surprise...

As regular readers will be aware, Martyn Bradbury is paid by several unions to run the Daily Blog. He's also paid by his bestie Kim, and the reason for that is now apparent.

The Daily Blog is, like us, running unscientific election polls. Here's the latest one, sent to us by a reader who took one for the team and ventured over there:

It's interesting that Martyn Bradbury's blog is the only place that has MegaMana featuring prominently in a poll. Perhaps Martyn has been spending his days voting, deleting the cookie, voting, deleting the cookie, voting etc etc.

But it's also interesting that at a blog funded by the union movement, with many of said unions affiliated to the Labour Party, Labour is trailing both MegaMana and the Greens, with a mere 20% of the vote. 

If Labour can only register 20% of the vote on a blog which should be friendly towards it, the party is going to be in big trouble when it goes to the country in September.


Footnote: The latest Keeping Stock political poll will go up on Friday morning, and will remain open until 7pm on Friday 20th June; exactly three months from the moment when the polls close in the 2014 General Election.

0 The Herald on coat-tailing

There's an interesting editorial in this morning's NZ Herald. Under the headline National should rise to challenge on coat-tailing the editorial begins thus:

Labour has made a worthy, and now selfless, proposal to abolish the provision in the Electoral Act that can give parties two or more MPs for the price of one electorate. It is a worthy intention because the "coat-tailing" rule can give those MPs influence out of all proportion to their tiny fraction of public support. And it is selfless because if Labour is in a position to carry out its policy after the coming election, it could owe its power to the electoral provision it wants to abolish.
The merger of Kim Dotcom's money with Hone Harawira's lone seat gives Labour a possible ally with two or three seats, which could change the Government. If that happens, it is hard to see Internet-Mana supporting legislation to abolish the very mechanism that has given it pivotal power.
By that time, Internet and Mana have said, they will be separate entities. They plan to dissolve their marriage of convenience six weeks after the election.

That would make their arrangement the most cynical use of the coat-tailing rule to date. Having entered Parliament on the basis of Hone Harawira's electorate, Laila Harre would become an independent. In that event she would have less moral right to be in Parliament than MPs who fall out with their party after entering on its list. They at least enter in good faith.

We disagree with the leader writer that Labour's position is "selfless". If anything, it smacks of self-interest. Labour will have polled internally over the weekend, and just as last night's Roy Morgan poll was an indictment on MegaMana, Labour's War Room boffins will have read the tea leaves, hence the policy being released on the hoof.

The irony here of course is that for Labour to be able to make good its promise, it will almost certainly need anyone elected under the MegaMana banner in order to be able to form a coalition and pass its promised anti-coat-tailing legislation. The voting public will see that, even if the Herald's editorial writer cannot.

There is a second irony to this. The 50th Parliament does not have any coat-tailers, when you consider:

• The Maori Party won three electorates, but not a big enough share of the party vote to bring in additional MP's
• Act (John Banks) won Epsom, but not a big enough share of the party vote to bring in additional MP's
• United Future (Peter Dunne) won Ohariu, but not a big enough share of the party vote to bring in additional MP's
• Mana (Hone Harawira) won Te Tai Tokerau, but not a big enough share of the party vote to bring in additional MP's

On that basis, David Cunliffe is using a sledgehammer to smash a problem that doesn't currently exist. And even worse, he is likely to form some kind of post-election deal with MP's who enter Parliament by a means he so opposes that he will introduce legislation to outlaw within 100 days of being elected. 

That is anything but selfless in our ever-humble opinion.

0 Quote of the Day - 5 June 2014

John Armstrong helpfully points to the hole that David Cunliffe has dug for himself over his determination to ban coat-tailing:

Of more immediate pertinence, Labour could yet need Internet Mana to secure a majority in the next Parliament. But bringing more MPs into Parliament alongside Hone Harawira will likely require that the new umbrella party's leader hold his Te Tai Tokerau electorate.
If Harawira lost, Internet Mana's party votes would go down the gurgler to the huge disadvantage of the centre-left in what is shaping as a very close contest.
But Cunliffe is now hamstrung. If he drops even the slightest hint - even a coded one - that Labour voters should opt for Internet Maori in Te Tai Tokerau, Cunliffe will be deemed an absolute hypocrite.
Not the kind of label you want to be carrying during an election campaign.

John Armstrong gets this one absolutely right (sorry Rex!), especially with the news this morning that Labour is prepared to do a deal with MegaMana if that is what it takes. To enable coat-tailing when you are promising to do away with it later would be complete and utter hypocrisy. 

It would seem once again that David Cunliffe has managed to seize disaster from the jaws of triumph!

0 Has Labour learned nothing from the Electoral Finance Bill debacle?

Those who have been hanging around Keeping Stock for a long time will know our history. The blog was started due to our anger at Labour's insidious Electoral Finance Bill, rammed through Parliament in the last sitting days of 2007. It was bad legislation, and the process was even worse.

After its defeat in 2008, many in Labour acknowledged their mistake, and their Act was repealed and replaced. The new law is not perfect, but it sure beats the legislation rammed through by Labour, with the support of the Greens and Winston Peters.

Today, it would appear that Labour has learned nothing from the 2007 fiasco, and two subsequent defeats at the polls; Stuff reports:

Labour leader David Cunliffe has committed to legislation that will remove the "coat-tailing" provisions that allow small parties to get more MPs into Parliament.
The party already has a member's bill before the House, but Cunliffe said legislation would be introduced within the first 100 days of a government he led.
Coat-tailing allows for smaller parties that have not reached the 5 per cent threshold, to bring more MPs into Parliament on the back of one MP who may have won an electorate seat.
It also can allow larger parties to do deals that would help smaller parties into Parliament, which happened with ACT and National in the Epsom seat in Auckland.
The Internet Party and Mana have also merged their list, in the hopes of bringing more MPs into Parliament on the coat-tails of Mana leader Hone Harawira, if he retains his Te Tai Tokerau seat.
Cunliffe said he challenged prime minister John Key to sign up to Labour's bill, but the party would move to change the Electoral Act within its first 100 days in government, regardless.
"We're saying a very principled and consistent thing," he told Firstline this morning.
"We think it's wrong, no matter who does it. 

It's good that Labour is now admitting it was wrong to put up low-profile candidates against Peter Dunne in Ohariu, against Jeanette Fitzsimons in Coromandel and against Jim Anderton in Wigram for all those elections. Even in 2008, when the tide was going out on Labour, they still gave Anderton an armchair ride into Parliament by standing a candidate who got almost 10,000 more party votes than electorate votes.

There is no need for Labour to rush through this legislation under urgency and with either an abbreviated or no select committee process however. The "100 days" target sounds snappy, but the reality is that if Labour was able to form a government, they have to start on the assumption that the coalition will be robust enough to last a full three-year term. That leaves plenty of time for a full select  committee process and a proper parliamentary debate, without the need for urgency.

To trample on the Electoral Act in the cavalier manner which Labour is proposing sets a very dangerous precedent. That alone makes us very suspicious that today's announcement by David Cunliffe is an act of political posturing, possibly influenced by Labour's internal polling showing distaste for the MegaMana dirty deal.

And of course the ultimate irony would be this; Labour forms a coalition with the GIMPs, of whom MegaMana have coat-tailed into Parliament, then outlaws coat-tailing. Hypocrisy much?

0 Espiner (C) on MegaMana

There has been a lot written in the last week about MegaMana, Kim Dotcom, Hone Harawira, Laila Harre et al. 

MegaMana Fatigue Syndrome is fast approaching, and a Dotcom-free day beckons, but it's not here just yet; not whilst people like Colin Espiner are making their voices heard. Under the headline What's behind Dotcom's civil union? Espiner (C) opines:

Say what you like about the sacrifice of conscience for cash - a great big German spanner has just been flung into the machinery of this year's election campaign.
I wasn't going to write about Kim Dotcom's vanity party again this week. It has had far more publicity in its short life than it deserves.
Plus, it seems that everywhere you look Dotcom is there. Giving evidence in the John Banks trial. Breaking up with his wife, Mona (on Twitter, of course). Fighting Hollywood over access to his millions. Calling on Prime Minister John Key to resign (again).
Shortly, it will be Dotcom in the dock as he fights extradition to the United States on fraud and racketeering charges. Forget Banks and buckets of mud - that hearing is going to be the trial of the year. So a bit of Dot-gone seemed like no bad thing.
And then suddenly, there he was in a civil union with the beneficent ghost from socialist Christmases past: Laila Harre.
The media was expecting Dotcom's Internet Party would announce a flake as its new leader. Or a complete moron. Either would have done just fine. We could have ridiculed them, and moved on to more important matters.
But Harre isn't a flake. And she's certainly no moron. She's one of the most driven, persuasive and intelligent politicians I've met. I don't know how Dotcom managed to put a ring on the darling of the Left but on the face of it, it's a major coup.
The question, though, is for who?
Harre is an old-school socialist. She's from a trades union background. She's a former member of the Labour Party, of New Labour, and of the Alliance Party. She's most recently worked for the Green Party.
She's mates with most of New Zealand's remaining old hard Lefties, including Matt McCarten (now Labour leader David Cunliffe's chief of staff), rent-a-protester John Minto (also in the Internet Party tent), ex Green MP and now ex Mana candidate Sue Bradford, broadcaster and former Alliance MP Willie Jackson (who's flying a kite about standing for the Internet Party himself) and radical Maori separatist Annette Sykes (president of Mana and number two on its list).
Harre was one of Jim Anderton's stars when the Alliance Party won 10 per cent of the vote and entered government with Labour in 1999. She quickly rose to Cabinet rank, and was a capable minister.
But when the Alliance imploded three years later, Anderton and Harre fell out. He went on to form the Progressive Party, returning to Parliament on the back of his safe Wigram seat. Harre took over as leader of the Alliance, and lost, badly, in the 2002 election.
On the face of it, then, Harre is likely to appeal to older Lefties who admire her feminist principles and strong trade union credentials. 

And therein lies the problem for Dotcom's "Internet" party; older Lefties are already voting for the parties of the Left, so all that is likely to happen is that the votes of the parties of the Left will get further diluted. MegaMana may get a bigger share of the vote, but it will be at Labour and the Greens' expense, and a few conspiracy theorists may be lured away from Winston First. Will that change the Government? Probably not.

Espiner (C) continues:

It's hard to see her appeal to young, internet-savvy geeks though. Last time Harre was in Parliament the internet was barely out of short pants. And the people she's trying to persuade to vote for her weren't born and certainly wouldn't know her from a 33K dial-up modem.
But does it matter? Probably not. As long as Harre gets votes, neither the Internet Party nor Mana will care where they come from. And she's got $3 million of Dotcom's money to spend - that's more than any other party contesting the election, including Colin Craig's Conservatives. 

It's going to be fun over the next few weeks going through speeches made during the Electoral Finance Bill debate. We've already made reference to Hone Harawira's remarkable transformation from one who hated the influence of money in elections to one who has $500,000 to spend this time around. 

And the Hansard extracts we've saved so far have some really doozies in them that we'll share a little closer to the election as the political landscape takes shape.

Here's the remainder of Espiner's piece, where he gets right to the heart of the issue, and what this obscene display of money-flashing is all about:

On the face of it, the Left has engineered a spectacular reverse takeover of Dotcom's party. It's like a reunion of every failed candidate from every disappeared political party of the past 20 years, funded by an avowed capitalist whose fundamental philosophy - the freedom of movement of capital and people - runs counter to everything his candidates stand for.
But remember, Dotcom doesn't really care. His political aims are pragmatic, not philosophical.
In my opinion, there are two reasons why Dotcom is manipulating the political process. First, he wants rid of Prime Minister John Key. Second, he doesn't want to spend the rest of his life in a United States penitentiary. If the Internet-Mana party is elected with more than a couple of MPs, then Dotcom is likely to achieve the first objective.
There is no possibility the party could side with National. So a vote for Internet-Mana is a vote for a Labour-Green-Internet-Mana-and-possibly-New Zealand First-Government.
On the second objective, it's possible Dotcom could delay any extradition ruling against him long enough for a change of government to take place. The new multi-tentacled administration could overturn a court ruling. It would be foolish and contrary to the rule of law, but it could.
The Internet-Mana party may also either confuse or scare the bejesus out voters and strengthen National's hand. Blue-collar, socially conservative, Labour-leaning voters - who'd only just got their heads around the idea of dealing with the Greens - may not countenance their vote ushering in a potential coalition led by far-Left feminist and Maori radicals.
In her acceptance speech of the Internet Party leadership last week, Harre admitted her party was gaming the MMP system in a bid to get into Parliament. But she said it was "time for New Zealanders to take back MMP".
It was a nice line, with a ring of socialist rhetoric to it. But nothing could be farther from the truth. The Internet-Mana party may be successful or it may fall flat on its face.
But it is Dotcom who is attempting to take over MMP. And it is for no-one but himself. 

Kudos to Colin Espiner for calling the MegaMana marriage for what it is; a cynical piece of manipulation by Dotcom, to his own benefit. And shame on all the supposedly principled Left-wing politicians like Harawira. Laila Harre and John Minto who are standing by and letting it happen.

In this case, the end does NOT justify the means. The largest attempted rort of our political democracy in this country's history is underway, and it needs to be strongly condemned. Roll on July 7th.

 

0 Quote of the Day - 2 June 2014

Karl du Fresne is one of a dwindling band of old-school journalists; the kind who don't simply recycle the many press releases that cross their desks each day. And his comments on MegaMana are interesting; under the headline Mana ties knot with eye on cash du Fresne opines:

Whatever else you might think of Sue Bradford, she sticks to her principles. You have to respect her for walking away in disgust from the Internet-Mana pantomime.
Who, other than the most gullible, is going to believe these two parties have genuine shared concerns? They are united only by rank opportunism.
Hone Harawira needs access to Kim Dotcom's bank account, while Dotcom seems driven by a personal grudge against Prime Minister John Key and a need for political friends who might help him avoid extradition. These are hardly a sound basis for a credible political party.
In his desperation to make the merger look honourable, Harawira argues that internet access is a pressing issue for young Maori.
This is a convenient but very recent conversion. When I last looked, digital access wasn't even mentioned on the Mana website.
The $200,000 that Dotcom reportedly put into the Internet Party is a far more likely explanation for Harawira's enthusiasm. But at least he had the decency to grin cheekily when he admitting coveting his new ally's resources. Like Winston Peters, he often gives the game away by grinning when he knows no-one is fooled.
Unfortunately, a mischievous grin can't disguise the notion that this alliance is a cynical exploitation of a flawed electoral system. Theoretically at least, there is a possibility that Internet-Mana will end up in a position of power that bears no relationship to its voter support.
What's more, the two parties have undertaken to review their relationship six weeks after the election. So if they get into Parliament, all bets will be off. Take that, suckers.
The best we can hope for is some entertainment as the inherent tensions boil to the surface and Internet-Mana blows up like Krakatoa. How long, for example, before Mana office-holder John Minto – a conviction politician in the Bradford mould – spits the dummy? He can only fool himself for so long that the merger is in the best interests of the proletariat.
Even on their own, Far-Left parties such as Mana have a glorious history of disembowelling themselves. Who knows what bloody mayhem could result when the hard-core Left hitches itself to a wholly incompatible ally like the Dotcom party? 

Of course, since du Fresne penned his column we have discovered that Herr Dotcom has put a lot more than $200k into the Internet Party. The generally accepted figure now is $4 million, with $500,000 of that being paid to Hone Harawira's cult party as a dowry.

Karl du Fresne is dead right (sorry Rex/Edward/Judge); this is indeed a "cynical exploitation" of MMP. And if Labour overtly or covertly instructs Kelvin Davis to not try too hard in Te Tai Tokerau, it too will be a party to this dirtiest of dirty deals.

 The Left has lost the right now to criticise electorate deals done by any other parties. Having so staunchly defended MMP when New Zealand last voted on its system of democracy, who would have ever expected it would have been the parties of the political Left who exposed just how flawed MMP is, and gave us convincing reasons to demand change?

In the meantime, let's just stand back and wait for the ritual disembowelling to begin!

0 Bromhead on the MegaMana Marriage

Herald cartoonist Peter Bromhead calls the MegaMana marriage for what it is:

This is a marriage which already has an end date set; so much for "'til death do us part". We still reckon though that it will end in tears.

0 Quote of the Day - 1 June 2014

The Herald on Sunday has chosen Martyn Bradbury to be its leftie of the week, and he doesn't disappoint, confirming what everyone already suspected; MegaMana is hardcore left-wing:

Some on the left call this a sell-out. Principled opposition is admirable, but who will tell the 285,000 children in poverty we wouldn't replace the Government because we couldn't agree on which version of Marx to follow?
If Labour and the Greens are to defeat Key's National, Act, United Future, Maori Party coalition, they need every ally they can get. A political party aimed at the group least likely to vote doesn't risk splitting votes on the left. With the Internet Party's resources and flax-root networks of Mana, the possibility of this being the parliamentary maths game changer is high.
If Harawira, Harre, Sykes and Minto are the "sell-out", sign me up.

Interestingly Martyn, not everyone is signing up. We spotted this on Twitter last night:

We suspect that Dylan Reeve will not be the only one to delete Kim Dotcom's app, as people start to understand the political motivation of the Internet Party, and its place in the political landscape.

0 Tweet of the Day - 31 May 2014

It would appear that Labour MP Chris Hipkins ISN'T a fan of the Large German Gentleman and his purchasing power:

Now we do have to note that Chris Hipkins, along with the likes of Trevor Mallard, Annette King and Clayton Cosgrove is aligned to the ABC faction within the Labour Party. So we can't say with any authority that David Cunliffe shares this view of Dotcom, which is a great pity.

David Cunliffe could earn himself a lot of respect if he were to come out and say that he will have nothing to do with anyone buying political parties. We suspect that Mr Cunliffe is much more an end-justifies-the-means politician.

Mr Cunliffe's attitude to MegaMana over the next few weeks is going to be fascinating to watch. Does he, like Hone Harawira, have a price?

0 The GIMPs revisited - by Curly Sue

Our resident song-rewriter Curly Sue has been at it again, reaching back into the mid-1970's to reprise an Elton John classic. Here's a very early version or the real McCoy by a rather follically-challenged Reggie Dwight:

Curly Sue saw our post yesterday about the GIMPs (Green, Internet, Mana, Peters), and the creative juices must have flowed almost immediately, because this arrive by e-mail late yesterday afternoon:

Davy and the GIMPs

Hey kids, you all can vote together
The spotlight's hitting Dotcom
His girth is known to change the weather
We’ll write off student loans tonight
So stick around
We’re gonna dust off Laila
The lolly scramble will astound

Say, young apathetics, have you seen them yet?
But they're so hot right now, D-D-D-Davey and the GIMPs
Oh but their line up is wonderful
Oh Davey he's really keen
They got goose step boots and Winston too
And they’re gonna dig up Alamein!

D-D-D-Davey and the GIMPs

Hey kids, plug in the “inter-web-thing”
They hope you’ll be blinded
And Davy makes them tricky
Rort MMP, and hope the youth come along
But left wingers doing it all for money

Is nothing but wrong

Say, young apathetics, have you seen them yet?
But they're so hot right now, D-D-D-Davey and the GIMPs
Oh how will they co-operate?
Oh the train wreck will be out of sight!
They got some union fruits and they’re cashed up too
Unfreeze Anderton from Carbonite!

D-D-D-Davey and the GIMPs

Say, young apathetics, have you seen them yet?
But they're so hot right now, D-D-D-Davey and the GIMPs
Oh but their line up is wonderful
Oh Davey he's really keen
Oh It does not compute; who’ll be the next recruits?

Corkery’s undies must not be seen!

D-D-D-Davey and the GIMPs

This isn't the easiest song in the world to mash, but we reckon Curly Sue has done a masterful job here. She and we hope you like it. If it helps the GIMP label to stick on Labour's potential coalition partners, who are we to complain?