NZ election 2014 post-mortem

Every election that comes about inevitably has some hacks saying it is “interesting”, “historic” etc, which of course they always are.  Elections always change governments in some way, even if not the ruling party. Psephologists (an area that I am often tempted to drop into) are keen to dissect some greater meaning from a vast range of individual decisions made at the ballot box or to not go to the ballot box, and political parties are even more keen to use that data to inform their future utterings of rhetoric, promises and contortions of fact.

The 2014 New Zealand General Election is, though, a bit more than all that.  For it needs to be seen in the context not only of 20 years of MMP politics, and an vigorous level of campaigning by opposition parties, that saw many pundits thinking the election would be close, either due to wishful thinking on their part, or because governments seeking a third term usually only scrape through (see 2005, 1996, 1981). 

In the height of economic recession, a majority of voters chose to change the electoral system, thanks to sustained campaigning by a coalition on the left, poorly focused counter-campaigning by those on the right (remember Janet Shirtcliffe?) and the feeling by a significant number of voters that they had had enough of radical reforms they neither understood nor felt were helping them.  Bear in mind in that same election in 1993, National won by one seat, with 33% of the vote.  First Past the Post meant that opposition votes were split between Labour, the Alliance and NZ First.

Today, opposition votes are also split between Labour, the Greens (which have succeeded the Alliance as the far-left faction in Parliament) and NZ First, but National has won an election in its own right, with the system many on the left thought would deliver them sustained so-called “progressive” majorities of Labour supported by a leftwing partner, and perhaps a centrist party maintaining a balance.  Not now.  Despite a campaign whereby the left DID campaign on a lot of policy, and dishing up a fair bit of dirt, a majority of New Zealand voters weren’t swayed.   National getting its best ever result since 1951 and Labour its worst since 1922 speaks volumes not of the split on the left (which has not grown, as the Greens are sustaining fairly consistent levels of support), but on a series of factors that should result in some introspection, particularly from the left...

2014 New Zealand voting guide for lovers of liberty

1. Is there a positive candidate to endorse?

2. Is there a likely winner worthy of tactically voting to eject because he or she is so odious??

3. Is there a tolerable "least worst" candidate?

So I list by electorate, the status of the electorate and who I am endorsing, then if you care, an explanation why.  Just search for the name unless you want to have a very long read...  and of course I am happy to see contrary views expressed.  I am updating this as I am on a series of flights in the next couple of days, and it is dependent on the gap between flights, wifi access and access to laptop power...

Internet Mana's job creation figures don't add up

Internet Mana's website says:

invest $1.03 billion each year to fund approximately 100,000 temporary jobs where the labour market is not able to create jobs.

Given the goal is zero unemployment, you'd expect the jobs to be fulltime, right? 

If you divide $1 billion among 100,000 you get $10,000 (gross) per job (let's say generously that it only costs $30 million a year to administer, although I'd argue it is closer to around treble that, given the need for offices, managers, etc).  

$10,000 a year means 260 work days a year if you deduct weekends, and include full pay on all statutory holidays.  So that's $38.46 per day.

Divide that by eight hours a day, you get $4.81 per hour, around a third of the current minimum wage.

So unless Internet Mana wants jobs that involve less than 3 hours work a day (which wouldn't surprise me given its heavily socialist leanings), it proposes funding 100,000 below minimum wage jobs.

If they were minimum wage jobs, the cost would go from $1.03 billion per annum to:

$14.25 per hour x 8 = $114 per day

$114 * 260 = $29,640 per annum

$29,640 * 100000 = $2.96 billion per annum

or let's say $3 billion +

but wait...

Internet Mana wants the minimum wage increased to the so-called "living wage" of $18.80 per hour.

This lifts the figure to an annual salary of $39,104, so a total cost of close to $4 billion if you include administration (and frankly with a "living wage" minimum wage, there would be a lot of unemployment to soak up with state "make work" schemes).

So leaving aside the Internet Party and Laila Harre's commitment to cannabis law reform, and Hone Harawira's opposition to it, the party's own policies on a single website, are contradictory.

I'm voting ACT

New Zealand citizens who live abroad are entitled to vote in the New Zealand general and local elections, provided they have visited the country once within three years.  Since I have been to New Zealand no less than five times since January 2013, it was hardly an issue for me, and I do have an interest in what happens in the land of my birth.   So I am going to vote.

It is just coincidence that Peter Cresswell has written a lot of what I was going to say about ACT, that it has finally become the party I long wished it would be.  

So I'm coming out now to say I am going to party vote ACT.  

Why?  Because it offers the best (indeed only) chance at influencing a future government towards focusing less on violating people's rights, and more on protecting them.  

Yes, there is room for improvement, indeed a lot.  After all, I haven't supported ACT since the 1996 election (and in 1999 I voted for Richard Prebble in Wellington Central if not the party).  Rodney Hide was utterly disappointing as Minister of Local Government, and John Banks is far away from m position on so many issues as to have almost rendered ACT extinct.

However, there are now some people leading ACT who are, by and large, facing the way towards more individual freedom, less government where it should be doing less (whilst undertaking its core role more effectively).  The original principles of the party are coming to the fore. 

The other choices are:

• to vote for a cozy, comfortable, corporatist National Party, which has lazily slipped into how it traditionally was on policy, by scaring people about the "other lot";
• to vote for the "other lot", a toxic swill of an increasingly deluded Labour Party led by a smug, self-satisfied bully, grouping with an increasingly confident socialist Green Party expertly shrouding their control-freak instincts with warm words about clean rivers and child poverty, and the corrupt coalition of communists, ultranationalists and Al Qaeda supporters called the Internet Mana Party;
• to vote for one man bands (Dunne, Peters, Horan) largely focused on their own aggrandisement;
• to vote for a well-meaning control freak who hasn't ruled out supporting the smug bully (Craig);
• to vote to legalise cannabis, but otherwise support any of the others;
• to vote for various other has-beens, or funny money lunatics.

My real choice was ACT, ALCP or National.  Of course I personally support ALCP's policy, but it is highly unlikely to progress, after many years of trying, and although you can argue such a vote is "clean" from a libertarian point of view (you are voting for less government, albeit in one sense), ALCP would grant confidence and supply to any government legalising cannabis.  Including one that would take away many other liberties.  

National ought to be the party of less government, and occasionally you hear the phrases about it wanting people to keep more of their own money.  It isn't the National of Rob Muldoon, but it also isn't the National of Ruth Richardson (and even that barely was).  National will offer three more years of tinkering, more spending and will do absolutely nothing to increase individual freedom or deal effectively to the RMA or the state education system's continued dominance of young minds.

A vote for National may be "safe", but it is a dead-end for freedom.  ACT's chances this time are dependent on David Seymour winning Epsom, but assuming he can (given that ACT managed it with John Banks before), a party vote for ACT can deliver a handful of MPs, and so give National a coalition or confidence/supply partner that will influence it in the right direction.  At a time when the Maori Party is shrinking, Peter Dunne at best will lead a one man band and Winston Peters looms as the back up choice, it makes sense to support ACT now.

Could the campaign have been improved?  Hell yes.  It could have embraced a more positive message for government that is about getting out of the way, that makes it easier for property owners, that lowers taxes by scrapping agencies that few people would ever support, that emphasises school choice with vouchers that will allow far more kids to go to independent schools, that takes on the welfare state and the corporate welfare state equally (a major criticism of the left).  

It could have been the party that attacks privilege granted by the state to anyone, whether it be race based boards, corporatist claims for subsidies, trade unions seeking higher pay for public servants with no performance, monopolies, and all of the rent-seekers wanting government to give them help at the expense of others.  

ACT can survive this election and get around 2% of the vote and build upon that for a result in 2017 that is closer to the 6-7% it got in previous elections.   It can stake a place being the only party that is consistently against more welfare for business and individuals, and less tax for both.

However, that's for the future, for now ACT's transformative changes deserve endorsement.  It really is a party that we can build more freedom on.

As far as electorate votes are concerned, I'll be writing my familiar voting guide for freedom shortly, but for now it's fair to say that two electorate votes matter more than any others right now:

- Epsom - David Seymour (for the reasons outlined above).

- Te Tai Tokerau - Kelvin Davis (Labour), to evict Hone Harawira and so keep Laila Harre and Annette Sykes out of Parliament.

So how does ACT measure up against what I said in 2008 it ought to do?

Let's end child poverty say the Reds

Well so say the Greens, with their enormous "give free money to the parents of poor kids" electoral bribe, to be paid for by a tax hike.

It's classic dyed in the wool socialism and its central premise is that it is somehow caring to take by force from a small proportion of the population to give people money because they have children they can't afford to raise properly.

That's it.

When Russel Norman says:

Proud to pay 7c more income tax on every $1 over $140k so 200,000 kids can have food in their bellies 

It defies description.  What's he doing with the money now if he believes so much that it would be better helping poor kids?  Couldn't he just spend that money now on charities to help them?  Couldn't he convince others to do the same?  What's the mentality that says "if only the government took more of my money I could be helping the poor more"?