Pundit

As much as I hate to mess with Jon Johansson's uplifting mood of aroha and the media's uncritical reports of National's coalition-forming honeymoon period, I've got some questions. Lordy, do I have a lot of questions. And they're not full of love.

My New Year’s resolution was to show aroha towards the people who matter to me this year. It was always going to be a tough ask to sustain but some good things have happened to me so far in 2008, so for today I’d like to indulge myself a tad.

With the release of the coalition deals yesterday, we get a closer look at the policy direction we can expect from the new National-led minority government.

David Farrar at Kiwiblog has got some specifics on the Specials, due out on November 22.

John Key has made a couple of hard calls that signal he is not going to be Mr Flip-Flop in government.

As National presents a forward-looking face to the electorate, with a fresh leader reaching out to Maori and planning to enter the world stage with urgency, Labour is today taking the dispiriting step of electing Phil Goff and Annette King as leader and deputy, respectively.

I wrote the following piece on Thursday last week and submitted it to the Sunday Star-Times the following morning. Despite a few anxious moments along the way there was no reason to change it on the night. I understand this piece was published in the Times' first edition but not its second, so for any who did not see it on Sunday I thought I'd reproduce it in full:

It's Monday after the election. So, at first glance, what's the good and bad news for each of the parties as the dust begins to settle?

The good news for National:

The electorates told the story last night. Odd as it may be for an MMP election, where it's the party vote that counts, it was the numbers coming out of seats such as New Plymouth, Auckland Central, and West Coast-Tasman early in the night that suggested Labour had failed to contain the swing to National and the mood for change. And so it proved.

Just to add some spice to your last minute calculations and political ponderings, Roy Morgan has released its election eve poll and, at odds with the other polls, it has National just 7.5 percent ahead of Labour and the Maori Party holding the balance of power.

I cast my vote in the New Zealand general election yesterday, by fax. No pilgrimage down Haymarket to New Zealand House this time – just log on, print off PDF voting form, tick boxes, struggle with fax machine, turn fax machine on and off, press send. Easy.

As you probably know, Pundit is only six weeks old and I've spent most of my journalistic career in the print media. It's been fascinating for me to join the web community this election, no more so than this morning.

The final polls, after weeks of volatility, have finally found some common ground. Coming from quite different positions two weeks ago, they now all agree that National, ACT and United Future will be able to govern without the Maori Party

If Labour, the Greens and the Progressives are able to pull enough votes together between them to form, or at least be the basis of, a centre-left coalition, what policy direction can we expect them to take? Given that Labour and Jim Anderton have been in power for three terms now, the past is the best indication of what the future would hold.

If you believe Helen Clark, this election’s about trust; if you believe John Key, it’s about change. The truth is, it’s about neither, because electioneering has very little to do with truth: it’s about persuasion.

Campaign ’08 has been a curious affair. So little seemed to have been changed during its course, but so much will change when it ends.

Welcome to the final leaders' debate. Just three days to go to the election.

7pm: The first question is about the US elections. John Key talks about a free trade deal, Helen Clark calls the Democrats a "sister party" and reckons Barack Obama will withdraw troops from Iraq. Will she go back to the war issue more often this night because of the latest Bill English tapes?

If National can hold its vote in the high 40s, it will probably be able to form a right-of-centre coalition government in the coming weeks, joined by ACT and United Future. While the media focus has largely been on potential partners and bottom-lines, there has been little analysis of how such a coalition would govern.

In 1992 James Carville, Bill Clinton’s chief strategist, wrote what turned out to be a winning campaign haiku. One of its lines read; ‘change versus more of the same.’ This, it seems to me, is the crux of this year’s tepid election campaign on our side of the Pacific.

In case you haven't seen this, read Selwyn Manning's brave and thorough survey of the electorates in this election.

Michael Jones was one of the greatest All Blacks to ever wear the number seven jersey, but his endorsement of National yesterday was foolish in the extreme.

If we look back almost a year to the day, a basic rolling average of the six most recent polls at 30 October 2007 gives a result which bears striking similarity to current rolling polls.

The short reply to last night's debate, is to say that John Key was marginally superior. Whatever points he gained in the first debate for seeming to be more polite were lost, as he talked and talked and talked over the top of host John Campbell and prime minister Helen Clark. Towards the end there was so much Key talk that I could have sworn he was talking over the top of himself.

“A Government that does not know what to do

As a candidate for the Alliance, a party that is temporarily resting outside of parliament, I have come to realise in the past few weeks how difficult it is for such groups to get any coverage this election. Not only is the whole campaign being portrayed as a two horse race by Clark and Key, the media is only paying attention to the parties which have MPs.

With the polls so close little over a week from the election, core supporters of all parties are focused intently on pushing their causes, hoping for enough votes to be central to coalition negotiations come November 9. So it's hardly the time to talk about the positives of losing, right?

Most lobby groups ramp up their activities in election year. The Business Roundtable gets quieter. Emails might fly behind the scenes (as they did in 2005), but the organisation aims for a low public profile.

I must admit it is surprising to hear Gerry Brownlee as point man for National's attacks on Winston Peters and Helen Clark today.

This week's poll of poll results shows the gap closing between the parties of the right and those of the left (with or without New Zealand First). The big movers are the Greens, up 0.7 percent, with National the big losers, slipping by almost a full percentage point. Still, pull the coalitions together and a National-led government remains on the cards.

I’ve always suspected Peter Dunne wants to be Prime Minister. It sort of befits someone who was reading Hansard when others were smoking behind the school bike-sheds. The dim prospect of that dream eventuating became apparent early on in

I’ve long had a theory about my own vices. I call it the ‘pillow theory'. If you punch a pillow in one spot it tends to balloon out somewhere else. So too with vices. Give up smoking and, hey presto, another vice quickly fills the void.

What might have been? It's a question we all ask ourselves at some stage in life, but it's especially pertinent now that Labour has announced it's reining in its strategy–some may say instincts–to make significant increases to social spending in the lead up to the election.

With Labour's announcement last weekend that it would be making no more major spending promises, the refreshing policy focus of this campaign came to an abrupt end. The media stuttered and stalled briefly then, in fear of running out of things to say, started talking about coalitions. (Until Lockwood Smith kindly offered himself up as the clown of the week. But that's another story).

Talk of the election campaign turning dirty has been sprinkled through our political debate this week. Labour released its Two Johns ad, which Helen Clark labelled as "humorous" and John Key called "down and dirty".

Pita Sharples and John Key have aired their differences over what they did or did not agree about the future of the Maori seats – but they will both bury them if their differing interpretations of a private conversation two months ago is the only issue standing in the way of a partnership in government.

In 2003, Howard Dean was taking on the Democrat party machine in their presidential primaries, pioneering the use of the internet as a political tool. Front-runner John Kerry’s campaign was under serious threat from Dean’s assault. Then,

I've just updated our PollWatch Poll of Polls and there's no change in the number of seats each party is likely to hold after the election.

One of several concepts that underpin the idea of generational change is the degree to which political language matches changes in the thinking of the rising political generation.

I’ve rarely seen Dr Pita Sharples squirm, so when it happens it’s noteworthy. Last week on Marae (hosted by the excellent Shane Taurima, who also asked the hardest questions in TVNZ’s leaders' debate), Sharples was undoubtedly squirming as the talented Labour candidate Louisa Wall pressed him on the issue of the party vote.

Interesting analysis of some battleground states by the NZPA today. MMP has taken the political and media focus off electorates, and to be honest I kind of miss that.

Helen Clark announced new housing policy today, the very policy that Idiot Savant and I thought could be their trump card in this campaign. Well, if housing is the card Labour strategists have been keeping up their collective sleeve, they haven't played it yet.

After one of the 2005 TV election debates, noted Herald political columnist John Armstrong wrote:

It was the moment of engagement that voters have been longing to see. Clark and Key went head-to-head. Old media ran interference.

Helen Clark and John Key tonight both got what they wanted–a head-to-head debate without the minor parties. Strategists from Labour and National respectively concluded that this one-on-one format was just what their leader needed and would give him or her the edge. One team of advisers had to be wrong.

It's been clear for months that Labour was going to need more than a steady-as-she-goes platform to win this year's election. Behind in the polls for so long, they needed a circuit breaker. The global financial crisis has given them one, and in these first few days of the campaign Helen Clark has used it to great effect, ramming home her message of experience and competence.

Sunday’s two major party election launches presented a tale of two New Zealands, according to media who were surely truly blessed in being

When TVNZ announced a couple of weeks ago that it would be joining with YouTube for the first leaders' debate, featuring questions from ordinary New Zealanders, they said it would be "history-making".

Steve Grove, Head of News and Politics at YouTube, said “this debate and give all New Zealanders the chance to have their questions heard - and answered.”

Today's new polls of polls adds the oddly erratic polls from the weekend, which saw at least one polling company embarrass itself with a poll that was wildly out of kilter with public opinion. But which one? TV3/TNS and Roy Morgan had Labour within six points, TVNZ/Colmar Brunton had National holding on to its comfortable double-digit lead.

In last week’s post I talked about our big change periods and the longer periods of consolidation between them. Today I want to explore more closely the cycles of our politics since 1984, because even within overarching periods of consolidation there are more subtle movements taking place within our politics.

Both our major parties are locked on parallel courses at the start of this election campaign. Both offer modest tax cuts. Both are committed to sustaining the current level of Government spending. Both will borrow to fund the tax cuts and sustain the spending.

A new Roy Morgan poll from early October shows National shedding seven percent of its support from two weeks earlier, down to 40.5 percent. Labour is up one percent, but more significantly is just three points behind on 37.5 percent. The Greens leap to nine percent, up 2.5 percent.

Rodney Hide strides up to the counter and helps himself to a cup of tea. He confides that he lost "50 kilos of fat" on a rowing machine. He collects compliments, as he always must when sharing this information, and heads off to schmooze.

With all the political theatre and national conversation around tax, prisons, and more tax this week, commentators and political reporters have spent the last few days declaring that these are crucial issues at a crucial time in this year's campaign. They're not wrong, but I've always thought this year's election would ultimately come down to shoes.

Richard Worth is on the phone to the mayor’s office. He’s trying to clarify some points of protocol for an up-coming do, patiently explaining to the person on the other end of the line that “we want to run it the old way”. In his blue and white striped shirt with its crisp white collar, the 60-year-old former lawyer has a lot of the old way about him.

Epsom is the country's smallest, wealthiest and least Maori electorate. It is also the seat where the Act party lives or dies and could have a crucial impact on potential coalition deals after the election. So if you're around Auckland tonight come and meet the candidates (and me), ask some questions, and drink some coffee at a town hall-style meeting.

Sometimes Michael Cullen can be too smart for his own good. This looks like being one of those times.

Despite its remarkably steady poll lead, as shown in the latest Pollwatch poll of polls here on Pundit, National is taking a considerable gamble in this election.

In Australia’s 2007 general election, there was a single televised leaders’ debate. So too the previous election. In

“The Time, so misordered, does crowd and crush us to this monstrous form”

Reading the papers this morning, there are hints that National’s $50 tax cuts plans might not have the punch the Opposition would hope.

Dancing Cossacks and the Exclusive Brethren notwithstanding, New Zealand

Helen Clark and John Key are right—a series of eight-way television debates during Campaign 08 would be a waste of their time, and a tax on the patience of viewers and voters.

Politics not policy is dominating the opening skirmishes of the election campaign. Much of the focus has been on the dark knight of New Zealand politics, Winston Peters, and whether he survives a third ministerial sacking. If he does, there is some small irony in the fact he can thank Owen Glenn for saving him.

A joint letter from news chiefs at TV3 and TVNZ last Monday pleaded with both Helen Clark and John Key not to turn their backs on multi-party debates, insisting they were of "fundamental importance in an MMP environment".

Pundit's Poll of Polls, brought to you by the good folks PollWatch, adds two new polls this week, from the New Zealand Herald and TV3. There's little change from last week, with just the Greens losing a seat under the new numbers.

The TVNZ PR folk have kindly returned my call and tried to clear up my questions about the YouTube debate. As I noted earlier this afternoon, CNN kept a tight rein on its YouTube debates in the US last year and chose which questions were asked.

TVNZ and YouTube have announced that our state broadcaster will follow the CNN model from the US primaries and allow voters to post questions for the party leaders on the video website.

I'm wondering whether you were all as disappointed as we were to see that Helen Clark and John Key have both refused to appear in an election debate with the leaders of the minor parties. It seems the only thing the pair can agree upon is to disrespect our MMP political system and the democratic importance of a stern contest between all those who seek power in this country.

With the valedictory speeches spoken and the last niggles niggled, parliament wrapped up its business today. Enjoy a quiet weekend, because it'll be all-out campaigning from next week.

Gordon Brown's big finale speech to the British Labour party conference offers a template for New Zealand Labour's approach to the election campaign here.