Bill Dalton

Regular readers will know I am a fierce opponent of MMP and yet even a bad electoral system can produce a good result.

Winston Peters is gone.
 
The man, who used to be a lightweight entertainer – who was one of the real characters of politics but became a nasty vindictive negative influence, is gone.
 
Well done.
 
Proponents of MMP claim that the party vote means we get the party we want – that the voice of the nation is heard.  How come then, the New Zealand First Party gained 4.2% of the party vote and is not represented in Parliament and ACT gained 3.7% of the vote, has 5 MP’s and is able to box well above that weight.  Great system eh!

Stuart Nash here in Napier – rejected by his own party as a candidate but may possibly, depending on special votes, just wander in to Parliament.  Great system eh!

Much is being made by a number of very silly commentators that New Zealand has changed to a “Far Right” government and that of course is unmitigated rubbish.  Labour and National are both parties of the centre – in fact if you look at their policies they both flop from side to side of each other.  Phil Goff for instance would be right of John Key on many issues.  The difference between the parties is the team they can put up. 
For those poor silly commentators that somehow have come to the conclusion that Labour was the party of the people and that National is some far right uncaring mob, let me explain what happened on Saturday.

We stopped the cart and took a tired old horse out from between the shafts.  The tired old horse had been reliable but its vision was not that good and we decided a fresh horse with better vision was required.
The horses are pulling the same cart – we are on the same journey but we decided a different horse suited the road ahead.  We made that decision to avoid problems ahead not to create them.

So despite the extremely rough economic road ahead, we should be celebrating the fact that we have a fresh horse that will hopefully pick its way through the difficult terrain.

My great hope is that, whatever your political persuasion, you will get behind this government.
Times are tough and they are going to need all the help we can offer.

Let’s get positive.

I have been keen on politics as long as I can remember and I can not recall a more boring or pathetic election.

I mean – it’s just bizarre when the most exciting question of the week – just days from polling day – is whether Rodney Hide should be displaying an authorisation on his yellow jacket or not.

Who cares!  The electoral finance act that demands such things is a nonsense and must go.

The TV 3 debate on Monday night was also pathetic.  How people watch that John Campbell I just don’t know.  After the so called debate, the panel of experts were disappointed that neither Helen Clark nor John Key had addressed the financial crisis that is affecting the world.

Of course they didn’t.  They were trying to answer the silly bloody questions put by Campbell.  If answers on specific topics were required – why weren’t questions on these topics asked?

I watched Agenda on Sunday morning – the best programme of the week on at the silliest time.  Winston Peters was simply an embarrassment apart from the fact that what he was saying was completely untrue.

Winston Peters used to be an entertaining lightweight but he has become so arrogant (God knows what he has got to be arrogant about) that he now lets every politician or aspiring politician down.  He has become a caricature of a politician.

Frankly the American election has been far more interesting and more and more New Zealanders have turned off from our boring little soap opera and tuned in to the Presidential race.

New Zealand politics seems to be lacking characters.  David Lange – Big Norm -  dare I say it Rob Muldoon.  Guys like Norman Jones from Invercargill were always fun.  Election campaigns in those days were informative and entertaining.

Now candidates are all controlled by the party machine – they all trumpet the party line and the whole process has lost its colour.

The only colour in this year’s election is Rodney Hide’s jacket and even that is under threat.

Frankly – I guess like you – I will be pleased when it’s all over.

It will come as no surprise to you that I have been involved in some pretty fiery political debates recently – mainly with the poor demented souls who still believe that MMP is good for New Zealand.

The basis of the pro MMP argument seems to be that minority views now have a voice.  That view – of course – completely ignores the fact that these groups have always had a voice within the main stream political parties.  Both Labour and National had their environmental lobbyists – their champions of all things Maori – their right or left wing rumps.  The sort of totally ridiculous nonsense we are now hearing from the Greens about New Zealand becoming totally organic would be noted but not become policy.  These views were heard within a balanced framework.

Just look at the bizarre scenarios that are being suggested as being possible after this election.

National – only able to govern with the support of the Maori Party.  The Maori Party has made it clear that they are not prepared to simply support on supply and demand – they want to be equal partners.  So a party with 7 seats or less could be an equal governing party with a party that gains say 55 or 56 seats.

The Greens have nailed their colours to Labour’s mast.  Doesn’t that prove what a nonsense MMP is?  Surely if they were really subscribing to the MMP myth, they would have left their options open so they could have environmental influence on whichever party is in power.

So the polls suggest that it is just possible that Labour might be able to stitch a government together with support from the Greens, Jim Anderton’s so called political party, perhaps the Maori Party and God forbid, Winston Peters.  The only way that could work is if they all agreed to do nothing.

Can you imagine the likes of Sue Bradford, Winston Peters, Hone Harawera – making collective decisions in New Zealand’s best interests.

I have said so often – I will vote for the party that promises a binding referendum on MMP and for that reason National will get my vote.

There is no doubt that the 2008 election campaign is going to be a grubby one – the dirty tricks have started already.

Labour is desperate to stay in power and they are not that stupid that they can’t understand polls.

National is equally desperate to gain what they see as their rightful place, the treasury benches. After nine years on the sidelines, they believe their time has come.

In the past, I have often commented that Labour and National struggle to find differences between them. They are both in the centre of the political spectrum, one leaning to the left and one to the right. Since the Greens split from Labour and ACT split from National, we have been left with a solid political chunk in the middle split between National and Labour.

However this election there appears to be a clear philosophical difference developing. Labour has, under Michael Cullen, run an amazingly conservative ship. They have tried to do all their infrastructure spending out of current income which frankly has resulted in the quality of our infrastructure declining and our taxes being held unnecessarily high.

National, on the other hand seems to be embracing the inter-generational funding philosophy, very typical of the way many local bodies are funded.

Basically inter-generational funding works along the same lines as you and I did when we bought our houses.

We didn’t try to pay for our houses out of current income. We acknowledged that our house was going to provide shelter for the next 50 years so we spread the cost over a number of years – even though that action incurred an interest cost.

National is suggesting a similar plan. The infrastructure that New Zealand is crying out for to allow us to get sustainable growth into the economy, is going to serve us for many years to come. Therefore it is unfair to current taxpayers to ask them to pick up the total cost, just as it is fair to ask future generations to contribute to this infrastructure.

No doubt we will hear emotional rhetoric about irresponsible borrowing – remember Muldoon talking about “Bill borrow and hope Rowling”. But sensible borrowing by governments is no different than a businessman borrowing to expand his business or you and I borrowing to buy a home.

In France, when a person is accused of wrong-doing they are deemed to be guilty until they can prove their innocence.

In New Zealand, the same person would be regarded as being innocent until the accuser could prove the guilt.  That is – everywhere in New Zealand other then at the Inland Revenue Department – they work on French law.

So, on that basis it could be said that Winston Peters is innocent – no-one has yet proven his guilt.  But, surely there have been enough questions raised in and by the media – questions about the Glenn donation, the Vela donations and the Jones donation, that to fail to give reasonable explanations is in effect obstructing the path to the truth.  If there is nothing to hide give us the facts.

Peters’ failure to even attempt to explain these matters and his insistence on arrogantly attacking any questioners is totally unacceptable behaviour from a person who draws his income from the public purse.

Surely the blue rinse set in Tauranga is not going to inflict this fellow on us again in November.

And speaking of unacceptable behaviour – the Labour Government, realising they are about to bite the dust, are flat out appointing all their cronies to cushy boards and public bodies.

They need to get these appointments made no later than 3 months out from an election so the process is in overdrive.

Last week alone they appointed 43 people to soft, publicly funded jobs.  They have appointed 140 in the last five weeks.

People like Mike Williams, President of the Labour Party has picked up a directorship of the New Zealand Transport Agency, his fifth such appointment.

I suppose the rumoured $140,000 plus per year he receives from these appointments, fees paid by you and I the humble taxpayers, ensures that the New Zealand Labour Party can save on any presidential stipend.

It really is open season on jobs for the boys – and girls – and you and I will be keeping these people in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

Doesn’t it make you feel good to be such a benefactor?

Yeah right.

Related links

Murry McCully’s newsletter - A Tsunami of Cronies? 25/8/08

Isn’t it strange how cult leaders always like to adorn their weird groups with a respectable main-stream purpose.

The Reverend Moon claimed his brainwashing cult was a religion.  Jones claimed his cult was a new and successful style of living until the Jonestown massacre.

Recently we have had an offshoot of the mormon religion led by Warren Jeffs who claimed he was doing gods work until it was realised he and all his grubby old mates were producing children from young girls.

Winston Peters simply calls his cult a political party.  MMP has enabled the likes of Jim Anderton to call himself a political party and therefore receive large dollops of dough from you and I the humble tax-payers and to me – that is bad enough.  But I certainly draw the line at a system that allows someone like Winston Peters to benefit from the government coffers as he does.

His so called political party is a joke.  As the leader of this cult in 2005 he blathered to all and sundry that he was not interest in the “baubles of office.”  Immediately after the election, when he saw he was in a position to bargain, all that went out the window.

Not only did he grab a ministerial post, with all its “baubles of office”, but he only took on the easy part of the job.

No Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade for Peters, he just took on foreign affairs.  Clearly there was too much work in the trade part of the portfolio because that was put in the excellent hands of Phil Goff.  Not even Aunty Helen would trust Winston in that important area.

And now Winston Peters asks us to believe he never knew that $100,000 had been dumped in to his legal fees account.  I don’t know about you, but I find that absolutely impossible to believe.

By his own admission, Peters is not a wealthy man.  You can’t tell me, that any man of modest means who has racked up huge legal fees on a fruitless mission to heal a bruised ego, would not know when someone dumped one hundred grand into the kitty.  And if, in the very slightest chance that your solicitor did receive the money and not tell you, wouldn’t you sack him forthwith.

Peter’s solicitor admitted on TV that if the large donation had not been received, then Peters was liable for the shortfall in fees.  Does that mean Peters had a pecuniary interest in the donation?  And for that solicitor to appear on TV and suggest that he acted in a way that he had been taught in the 1980’s – well its’ just laughable.  Doesn’t he realise there have been substantial changes in MP’s disclosure rules since then.

Frankly, even those poor sycophantic souls who have continued to support the Winston Peters cult, must now see the error their ways.

I still can not believe – or I don’t want to believe the information that John Key brought to our attention this week.

Key claims that bureaucracy is gobbling up huge amounts of the government’s contribution to sport in this country. He claims that Sparc, the government’s sports funding agency, spends a third of its budget on administration. We are told that Sparc employs 86 full-time staff, 47 of them on over $100,000 per year and 14 of those on over $150,000 per year. And despite this army of highly paid and therefore one would hope highly skilled employees – they plan to spend $5.5 million on their website this year.

Frankly I find this outrageous. Surely the government allocates funds to Sparc with the intention of improving the health and well-being of all New Zealanders. Surely the government allocates funds to Sparc to foster sport in such a way that champions are produced. People we can all be proud of.

I am sure Sparc was never set-up to produce a large number of highly paid semi-civil servants who no doubt bolster the numbers on the Wellington cocktail party circuit.

The minister who allowed this to happen should be sacked although - in the interest of costs – we can probably wait until November when that will happen anyway.

But it does raise in my mind the so-called regional sports park.

I say so-called because it is clearly a Hastings District Council initiative – if it was truly regional, others would have been consulted in the region.

For instance – and I accept that this project has been underway since 2004 – I have never been asked if I think a velodrome is a greater asset than a swimming pool, or if gym-sports were more important then badminton.

It is my view that the opportunity to build this park has been lost. We are now into a severe downturn in the economy and corporate backing is going to be extremely hard to obtain.

But if Hastings do manage to complete this ambitious project, they are going to have to be very careful that the planned administrative offices are not full of overpaid bureaucrats eating from the hands of real sports people.

Fuel prices are continuing to rise and we have to ask ourselves – “Why has the price of oil more than doubled and now looks like trebling?”

One thing is for certain – the cost of extracting oil from the ground hasn’t doubled or trebled so somewhere along the way the market is being manipulated.

The Opec nations claim they are not ramping up the prices and yet daily we read stories of the amazing standard of living of the heads of those oil rich states. Personal 747 jets with solid gold bathroom fittings – diamond encrusted Mercedes cars – palaces and houses of indecent proportions – these are certainly not the trappings of those who work on narrow margins.

We know that countries such as the United States released oil from their strategic reserves when prices started to rise – hoping to stem the flow of price increases.

We also know that when they realised that prices were going to continue to rise, they then started to rebuild and expand their reserves therefore exacerbating the problem.

Fuel reserves are essential for the United States Security Plan and as high oil prices tend to undermine international security – they simply need to bolster reserves.

India and China are rapidly increasing their usage of oil as the standard of living improves in these countries. China in particular seems to be oblivious to the situation in the rest of the world and tends to work on the “I’m all right Jack” principle.

Clearly there are speculators somewhere in the middle who are seizing their main chance.

The international oil companies are announcing record profits. As usual they are quick to raise prices on the news of dearer crude and totally ignore the fact that the opposite should happen when crude prices fall.

And all the time sitting on the sidelines is the government. Their tax take is set as a percentage of the pump prices so – the higher the petrol price the greater their take. Michael Cullen must be rubbing his hands with glee. All this extra money pouring into the Government Coffers and he and all his colleagues have cars and petrol supplied by you and I the humble taxpayers.

Now there’s a thought - cars and petrol for City Councillors.

Yeah right.

Many of you will know that I have had a life long interest in politics. Even as a kid I followed central politics with a keeness a little unusual in children.

I well remember our MP, Jim Edwards, who was Arnold Nordmeyer’s son-in-law coming to our school and I vividly remember the reaction to Nordy’s Black Budget in 1958 – I was 7.

In every government since there has been one or two members who were appallingly arrogant and frankly I always detested that arrogance. I always thought that if I became a central government politician – which was a dream for many years – that I would never become arrogant. Arrogance in my opinion usually covers up inadequacy.

Well we now have a government which is chock full of arrogant individuals from the top down. Labour used to have its rotweiller Trevor Mallard to do its dirty work. When an altercation in Parliament’s Foyer proved him to be more of a toy poodle, they quickly put him back in his kennel. Have you heard from Mallard lately.

So they have wheeled out the smart tongues. The deliverers of the sharp one liners like Clark, Cullen, and Parliament’s most arrogant individual Cunliffe.

Frankly the current approach to New Zealand’s problems by Helen Clark’s government is not only arrogant, but is also inept.

Clearly they see John Key as an individual, being a real threat.

Why else would they spend so much time attacking him personally. And when Key asked Labour’s front bench when they were going to get on with the real business of government and cut out the personal attacks, the best the super arrogant Teflon Tyrant could muster, in the house, was diddums.

The Prime Minister of this country and all she could come up with in response to a reasonable question was diddums.

You and I the humble taxpayer should expect better than that.

Telling the leader of the opposition he is an empty space is equally pathetic.

Being the boring person I am, I watch a lot of channel 94, Parliament. Last night Cunliffe was so glib and arrogant I had to turn it off – my blood pressure wouldn’t stand it.

It is time that these disappointing examples of the human race were given a very clear message that we expect better.

Mind you - that might have to wait until November.

There is no doubt in my mind that somehow or other, we need to get rid of Winston Peters and his loony lieutenant Peter Brown.

Frankly – on the international stage – they are an embarrassment.

Let me remind you. Before the last election Peters made it clear he was not interested in the “Baubles of Office.” Then, when this totally unprincipled opportunist spied the main chance – he convinced Helen Clark to split the Foreign Affairs and Trade Ministry – leaving the hard work of trade with Phil Goff – and he has swanned around the world with his entourage, from junket to junket ever since.

The comments of Peter Brown, his off-sider, can be dismissed as the mumblings of a fool. But with Peters the situation is far more serious. How can this man pour himself around the world as our foreign affairs minister, whilst at the same time telling those he meets that he disagrees with one of the main policy initiatives of the Government he represents.

It is an impossible situation and my God – some of you voted for the system that allows it.

One way or another Winston Peters needs to be removed from his position as an international representative of New Zealand.

But don’t feel sorry for him – he will quickly worm his way into another cushy number at the taxpayer’s expense – it is all he knows.

I have to say I am beginning to despair about New Zealand society. I hate to see our young people settling in Australia but frankly I can’t blame them.

As of next month I will have two of my three kids settled in Melbourne and frankly if I was in my 20’s, that’s where I would be too.

All this nonsense about not being able to buy home-made jam – not allowed birthday cakes and other piddling decisions probably made by some kid in Wellington is starting to drive me nuts. And this enormous over-regulation is one of the real things that is driving our youngsters away.

What is needed in this country is the same energy that has been put into developing an army of civil servants to be put into increasing productivity so that we can all enjoy the spoils and hopefully keep our kids at home.

Perhaps we could send Winston Peters to Australia instead.