David Cormack

The Boagie (wo)Man

Hamish Walker's seppuku is the sort of scandal that political nerds love. It started off with criticism of one party, then blew up in another's face. And then it involved characters from a previous series.

I don't want to canvas what he's done - there are 2020-07-07 22:50:15 +0000 UTC View Post

Who's rallying around the flag?

The last reputable poll we had before we went into lockdown was on 1 News in mid February. In it National was on 46 points and Labour was on 41. NZFirst on 3.3, the Greens on 5 and ACT on 1.7

Then COVID happened. 

Both television networks waited until after lockdown and after the budget had been delivered to poll again. Then we got two in a week and boy howdy were they good for Labour. TV3 which is usually the better one for Labour had them on 56.5%, Nat...

Lying liars or incompent?

Predictably, the National Party response to the Green Party policy launched today has been scare mongering bollocks.

In the release from National's finance spokesperson, Paul Goldsmith, above, he says that "a successful small business person owning a $1 million house and business worth $1 million would have to pay $40,000 a year for the 2 per cent wealth tax.
Aside from the fact very few p...

Better benefits AND a wealth tax

The Green Party has today launched the first bold policy of the 2020 election campaign.
The guaranteed minimum income policy is a well thought-out and sensible idea. It effectively sets the benefit rate at $325 a week, which is a wee bit more than the minimum recommended by the Welfare Expert Advisory Group (the WEAG was tasked by Labour to come up with a bunch of recommendations for the party to then ignore). 
New  Zealand has woeful rates of poverty, especially child poverty...

How to campaign: The Green Party

Over the coming weeks I plan on writing a column setting out how I would design an election campaign for each party (that is currently in Parliament).

This first one is the Green Party.

Current status: They'll be getting a bit nervous in Green Party HQ. The party has been hovering between 4-6 per cent for a while now and they'll want that to grow. Especially given that the Greens seem to overpoll leading up to the election, then underperform on the day. That said,...

The Fault in our Stars

This has not been a good week for politicians. If you take Sunday as your starting day for weeks, like so many calendars do, then you start with Todd Muller's speech.

He did it in front of an upside down Tino Rangatiratanga flag and flubbed that he'd joined Labour. Sadly for Todd these were the only things that media really picked up on because these sorts of mistakes join a compelling narrative that Todd is a bumbling, fumbling man.

It was suggested that his team had hung the fla...

100 days of solitude

It's been a curious strategy that team Muller has been taking in terms of getting New Zealand familiar with the would-be Prime Minister.

On his opening day as leader he made a passably acceptable speech and was asked about his relative anonymity. He said that he hoped he'd be on the news that night. Ho ho ho we laughed.

Except after a few days' blitz of political media - the Nation, Q&A, Breakfast etc - he's all but vanished.

This might be because all of those interviews...

National's saviour of the polls?

National Party supporters can breathe a sigh of relief. They no longer have the dreaded 2 in the front of their polling numbers according to a leaked internal poll from Labour. It's a 3. Followed by a 0. 

Yes in a polling period that only started from when Muller took over, he's taken National from 29 in the most recent Colmar Brunton poll that toppled Simon, to 30. Bravo Todd, loving the honeymoon bounce you got.

The poll continues the good news for Labour, it's at 54 per ce...

Being For The Benefit of Mr White

The United States is burning. This seems to represent a touchpoint of race and class warfare. Triggered by yet another senseless murder of a black man - George Floyd - by police, following hot on the heels of a no-knock raid in Kentucky that saw Breonna Taylor murdered by police and her boyfriend arrested for shooting back at what he assumed were people breaking into his house.

He's since been freed without charge but Breonna remains dead.

The protests against police brutality wer...

Not a good start, Todd

When Boris Johnson became Prime Minister, he soon realised it wasn't going to be as easy as he thought. There was a vote in the Commons about whether the UK could crash out of Europe without a deal. Boris did not win. "Not a good start, Boris" rang out a voice from the backbenchers. And for the first few months those five words seemed to d...

Todd Muller: First impressions

Todd Muller knifed Simon Bridges just three days ago now, but in that time we've had an opportunity to get some early impressions.

His speech announcing his own leadership was fine without being startling. It had all the hallmarks of a traditional National Party leader's speech. I think we'd forgotten what that was like given Bridges has been anything but conventional.

His best line and the one that has all received the most attention was that "First and foremost I'm about what's ...

That poll

I have nothing to say on that, other than I hope the Greens go higher.

That poll speaks for itself.

Todd Muller may be safe, but he's not got any kind of X Factor to see National to a respectable total. I doubt there will be any Mullermania.

The only wildcard left is what Paula Bennett does. She could be out of a job if she's sent to the back benches. She doesn't have an electorate seat anymore. She'll do anything to save her skin.

The Battle for National's Soul

One of the columns I wanted to write when I still wrote for the Herald was a piece on the rising Christian fundamentalism within National. I never got around to it as it was never that relevant, however it's become super relevant.

The leadership speculation has obviously been at feverpitch within National. Muller and Kaye had been speculated as a pairing for weeks, but it was also known that they didn't have an outright majority to get them over the line.

One National MP from Te...

Oof

Like...we knew it would be bad. But whew. That poll is real bad.

Obviously there's incumbency advantage going on. When there's a disaster, people rally around the leadership if they're seen to be handling the disaster well. So that would explain a large part of the surge. But also Simon is going to have to take some responsibility.

As soon as it was reported my phone lit up with National folk. "He has to go." "We need to strike now." "The party is fucked." 

From what I ...

The National response

Heading into Simon Bridges' response to the budget, it was make or break. Both leader aspirants - Judith Collins and Todd Muller - had made it very clear that his budget response speech could be the end of him.
When he got up to make his speech it was clear he was nervous, so I think Simon knew too. However his speech wasn't the trainwreck that his earlier efforts had been and so the knives stayed out of his back for a few days more.
But now there's another spectre looming: polls. TVNZ ...

Something to displease everyone

We could have had transformational change. Instead we got a fairly traditional Labour budget, just with added zeroes.

In hindsight it seems obvious they would never do anything radical. Not in an election year. Not without having campaigned on it. Not with a coalition partner like NZ First.

There are certainly clever parts. 

Extending the wage subsidy is good, and by making it for businesses who have lost 50 per cent of revenue you hone it in on industries like tourism ...

The curious case of the Loans in the Night-Time

A week and a half ago (or 9 years in COVID time), the Government passed a bill it didn't mean to. It passed a bill enabling Inland Revenue to issue billions of dollars in loans to small businesses, bypassing the banks who, lets face it, are banks and will always be massive bankers.
 Jenée Tibshraeny wrote a g...

The books are already fucked

Yesterday during Post Cab the Prime Minister tried to temper expectations of a massive spending lolly-scramble of a budget. She said "I need to warn you, this budget will see us continue our careful approach to the books".
Fuck your careful approach to the books. The whole world's economy is shitting the bed. Now is not the time to be coy. You told us you'd be a transformative government so just get on with it and transform some shit.
As supreme shit-poster Morgan Godfery pointed out, "...

Twitter Q&A

Following on my fellow patreon creator Liam Hehir, I will be doing a brief Q&A based off questions from you, my patrons!

At 7pm tonight after I've put Greta to bed I'll answer the questions that you post below.

Only rule is don't be a dick.

My twitter is www.twitter.com/david_cormack if you're interested. 

The Lame Duck leader

The latest disaster poll for National to emerge is a UMR poll which puts them at 29 per cent.

It had Labour at 55, NZFirst at 6, the Greens at 5 and ACT at 3 per cent.

Obviously the crisis of COVID-19 and the PM's adroit handling of it meant that Labour would aways go up, but the fact it seems to have massively benefitted from National and not the Greens or NZFirst i...

Let's get New Zealand working again

The National Party has a new refrain. "Let's get New Zealand working again." In his Ministerial Speech in parliament yesterday, Simon Bridges said a variation of it five times.

Finance Spokesman Paul Goldsmith even wrote an Op Ed with that as the title.

First off, it's a risky play having a slogan that bea...

Opportunity beckons

There are not many governments that get the chance to redesign an economy from almost the ground up. While our entire system of wellbeing has not been burnt to the ground by the COVID-19 pandemic, it sure as hell taken a beating.
This presents Grant Robertson with a chance to make his mark on New Zealand's history by designing an economy that is values-based and for everyone, not just a few well-off people or big businesses.
One of the major criticisms of this Government was that they w...

Breaking: Spull?

There are credible rumours coming out of team National tonight that a ticket with Paula Bennett and Mark Mitchell is doing the numbers on a potential leadership coup.

This particular pairing has been talked about for a long time. Previous incarnations have had Mitchell, the former cop and mercenary who served in Iraq, as leader with Bennett staying on as Deputy. Whether that's tonight's version remains unclear.

Nikki Kaye and Todd Muller have also been making phonecalls just to "c...

Other writers?

If I turned my column over to other writers every now and again (obviously paid them), would you be cool with that?

When the leaks began

In an earlier post I talked about a Curia Poll I was given access to that had Labour on 49 and National 31.

Obviously the context is important, and that context is that we're in the middle of a national emergency and there's a theory called the "rally 'round the flag" effect where people support w...

What should my next column be on?

Do you want more "insider goss", or a higher level lefty think piece?

Leaked Curia poll pretty terrible sign for National

Polls are a snapshot in time. One poll is pretty unhelpful, you need multiple polls to get a trend. Internal polls are also notoriously unreliable. I've been leaked several of Labour's internal polling but that's usually when it suits Labour.
This time I was given the (alleged) poll results of National's internal polling - Curia - run by notorious KiwiBlogger David Farrar.
The numbers I was given by a normally reliable source showed a pretty dire situation for National.
Labour was on...

English country garden

The Herald is reporting on a briefing done by former Finance/Prime Minister Sir Bill English. 

Sir Bill is a strategic advisor to Jarden, a wealth management firm. He gave a presentation on the implications of the Covid-19 outbreak on the world's finance markets.

Bill made the following comments:

"An equity market that seems to shrug off such an enormous dislocation would attract broad consensus across the political spectrum that something is amiss, and a CGT is needed....

Dance of the desperates

It's week three of the lockdown and people in New Zealand are looking towards a post-lockdown world, while politicans fret over polling.

For many that means thinking about what sort of income - if any - they'll be able to get. For politicians it means an election that is coming their way fast.

Already we've seen Paula Bennett from National and Winston Peters from New Zealand First say that the election should be delayed. Which is utter nonsense. We're still five months from the el...