Heartland Party

I have written before about the need for New Zealand to have a strong political party promoting regional interests. Now is the time to form such a party.

Why right now? We have an almost impossible situation; the leader of NZ First went to Turkey in his capacity as Foreign Minister, and when there at a critical time, he fell asleep. This is the state of government in New Zealand - asleep.

Then we have the Greens with their ultra left-wing agenda, refusing to be in coalition with the government but wanting all the baubles and bangles nonetheless. It's outrageous.

There have been attempts to get parties off the ground, one most recent that comes to mind is the Conservatives which was largely backed by Colin Craig. It didn't work, face it, NZ does not vote for conservatives, the country is centre/left and will remain so.

Recently we have Vernon Tava and his version of the Greens. Problem with that, it is essentially a single issue party with a claim to be less left than Greens. It'll likely fail. There is the possibility that the whole exercise is an attempt by the Greens themselves to head off anyone looking to occupy their ground (National's Blue Greens setting up separately for instance), who knows.

Where is the potential? Think about this; there are 5 million people in New Zealand, 3.5 million of them outside Auckland. A regional party would be the voice of those 3.5 million people. That's a voter base that could rock.

I'm prepared to join such a party, but what does it need to be successful? By my estimate, at least 2,000 members. Yes, 500 are needed to register but that isn't enough. I arrive at my figure by looking at the 71 seats in NZ right now and figuring how each electorate could function as campaign entities. That means at least 28 people in each being active. 2,000 members in total.

Is this a pipe-dream? Possibly, but something has to be done or NZ is going to sink. Call me or contact me using the contact form on this page if you think you're up to it and want to make a difference.

Labour Panic

The Prime Minister of New Zealand is an ineffectual buffoon living in his own delusional world of make-believe. He cannot organise a piss-up in a brewery, so what does the main opposition party do? They throw one of their better campaigners overboard that's what.

Annette King was an effective deputy and well liked. More importantly she was good at keeping on message and she had no ambitions for the top job. Labour leader Andrew Little is a somewhat grey man and Annette King's more down to earth style was a useful counterpoint. Most Labour voters still identify with the type of person Ms King was, than they do the book-worm nerd that Andrew Little is. You can imagine King on the loading dock reading the riot act to the union membership but not Little. He'd get laughed at, Little by name, Little by nature.

King, at 69 was likely considered too long in the tooth. Big mistake that as she would be needed in any future coalition negotiations if Labour was to find itself in position to form a government.

Instead what we have is the almost certain elevation of Jacinda Ardern to the position of deputy to Little. Another lightweight standing alongside.

The line-up looks like this:

For National it's Bill English (ineffectual) and Paula Bennett (Westie) vs Labour's Andrew Little (lightweight) and Jacinda Ardern (even more lightweight).

So it's National to be re-elected in September then, unless another party rises to challenge the status quo and becomes King maker.

>>Link Thingie<<