Category: Internet Party

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The Dotcom/Greenwald/GCSB revelations

Tonight at 7pm we will finally see the long-awaited, much-hyped Kim Dotcom bombshell. Its contents have been teased by journalist Glenn Greenwald over the weekend, and many are pointing with glee at John Key’s statements from a year ago:

Prime Minister John Key says he and the head of GCSB would resign if the spy agency were found to have conducted mass surveillance.

…

Asked if he and GCSB chief Ian Fletcher would resign if there were mass surveillance, he said yes.

“But the facts of life are it won’t happen.”

For that to happen, the GCSB would have to undertake illegal activity.

…

“If I wholesale blatantly flout the law as Prime Minister I’m never going to survive anyway.”

It looks open and shut: Key said he’d resign if there were mass surveillance of Kiwis by the GCSB; there’s been mass surveillance of Kiwis by the GCSB; ergo Key must resign. But we know it’s never that simple in New Zealand politics and even the most black-and-white phrases are but fifty shades of grey in the Prime Minister’s mouth.

… ew. Didn’t think that metaphor through at all.

As I tweeted on Saturday, after seeing the buzz on Twitter (nothing but Metiria Turei telling Colin Craig to talk to the hand is getting me out of bed to watch The Nation in the morning), we need to think about all the potential outs Key has left himself with the above statements.

1) The context. Key’s comments were made “in the light of assurances that the changes to the GCSB Act 2003 would not mean mass surveillance of New Zealanders.” Technically, you can read this to mean that Key was only referring to mass surveillance which occurred after the law changes were made.

2) The qualifiers. Key says “if I wholesale blatantly flout the law as Prime Minister.” Well, you know, at the end of the day I’m quite relaxed about what’s happened and wouldn’t say it was blatant, because no one knew it was happening, and certainly not wholesale because there may be some Kiwis we didn’t illegally spy on.

3) The timing. It would be the easiest thing in the world for Key to say, “look, I said I wouldn’t survive as Prime Minister if this happened, and we go to the polls on Saturday anyway, so the people can decide for themselves then.” Never mind the fact over 150,000 people have already voted.

4) Just plain lying. This is a Prime Minister who managed to draw a line between “this one serious leaked email which meant a Cabinet Minister had to resign is valid” and “this entire book of serious leaked emails which implicate my entire administration is invalid.” Most people don’t know a lot about what our spy agencies do, or are meant to do, or shouldn’t be doing. If they’re reassured that only bad people were spied on illegally, or technically it wasn’t really illegal because the law is just so gosh-darn complex, they’ll believe it. It’s reasonable to.

Will these revelations damage Key and National substantially in the minds of people who weren’t already leftwing activists? I don’t think so. But it’s still good that we know exactly what kind of shady stuff our government has been up to so we know what to fight for when we’re in a position to change things.

The town hall meeting is being livestreamed at The Daily Blog tonight if you want to watch it. I won’t be, since I’m not sullying my monitor with Julian Assange’s creepy sexual-assault-charge-evading face.

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The opening addresses of Election 2014

(Updated: more links to videos for your viewing pleasure)

Last night the opening party political addresses were broadcast on TV One, simultaneous with an All Blacks match and a live-tweeted crowd viewing of Labyrinth. So if you missed out (and don’t follow my every thought on Twitter), here’s my reaction!

(Screenshots nicked and cropped from Asher Goldman on Twitter.)

National: so corporate. Much artificial. John Key in a staged “interview” blathering about goals and targets and not changing horses midstream but really without any kind of concrete policy, while an increasingly-irritating Eminem ripoff plays. And lots of rowing. And a very clunky “Oh Bill English is a great asset FYI” line thrown in which makes me suspect succession signalling is underway.

National’s full video doesn’t seem to be available online but if you just watch the short version a few dozen times it has much the same effect. is now online here.

Labour: I loved this one. Yes, I’m biased. But the idea of getting the caucus out to do a community project, taking turns to discuss their own policy areas with real Kiwis, was genius. It was a huge contrast to National’s corporate one-man-band routine. And there were real, solid policies to work on, which is a bit of a bugbear of mine.

I actually want to help out at a community centre if it involves Andrew Little and Carol Beaumont making me cheese scones. They even got David Parker out of his suit.

You can watch Labour’s video here.

Greens: Didn’t grab me as much as Labour’s. Their focus was strongly and naturally environmental, Metiria and Russel did a great job of injecting their own stories and personality into it, but there wasn’t a strong narrative as there was with Labour’s.

You can watch the Greens’ video here.

nzfirstNZ First: Winston doing his best General Patton in front of a terribly CG’d New Zealand flag, and a diverse range of people asking rhetorical questions to camera. You may note Winston’s tie is red and black, so read into that what you will.

conservativesConservatives: Colin Craig hitting his usual talking points about binding referenda to a room of silent, bored-looking white people. He really is a charisma-free zone.

actACT: If you did not watch this, find it. Now online! Watch it! It’s the funniest thing broadcast this year and may have actually been made using Windows MovieMaker, it’s that budget.

internetInternetMana: cartoon futuristic hovercats. Enough said, really. You can watch it here.

dunnePeter Dunne: a few minutes of Dunne talking to camera about how reasonable and middle-of-the-road he is, while parroting Key’s lines about staying the course. Lacking his characteristic bow tie, which may bode poorly for him.

ALCP: Rate a mention because their video was approximately a hundred times more professional-looking than ACT’s.

Focus, Social Credit, and Brendan Horan’s outfit: Shrug.

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The bottomless Labour-Green divide

Mea culpa. It’s a bit of a Buzzfeed-style clickbait headline, but it’s also a political meme which I really wish we could put out to pasture.

It seems like every time Labour (or the Greens) announce a policy the first question (after “what does John Key think about this?”) is “But the Greens (or Labour) have a different policy to the one you just announced! How can you possibly work together in government?”

Anything even vaguely associated with Internet-MANA gets it even worse.

It’s not a question you often see posed to National, and it’s tempting to make this a moan about media bias. But the simple facts are National isn’t in the same position as Labour or the Greens. The most extremist party on their side – Colin Craig’s Conservative Party – are very unlikely to get into Parliament unless there’s some fundamental[ist] shift in the polls which means National throws them a Hail Mary seat.

The two parties guaranteed to support National – ACT and United Future – have good steady records of rolling over and voting for whatever National tells them too.

And Winston, well. He doesn’t agree with anyone on anything if he can help it, but also has form for signing up to whichever side gives him a prestigious title and a single big policy which he can point to as a major concession (the Gold card being the canonical example.)

So let’s put aside the idea of media bias and consider ourselves lucky that on the left we have three genuine options to vote for, four if you want to ignore the Māori Party’s stated priority of doing what it takes to get “a seat at the table” and think they’ll get more than one seat.

The problem for the left is that, especially with the aforementioned total-lack-of-real-disagreement on the right, disagreement is being treated as antagonism*, and reconciling those disagreements is being treated as a problem for MMP.

Having parties with different views forming a government is not a weakness of MMP. It is the strength of MMP.

The whole point of proportional representation is that each party has exactly as much power as the voters of New Zealand have given it. Instead of a winner-takes-all system where a party can do whatever it likes on the back of only 35% support, enough parties have to find common ground that you could reasonably assume the outcome is the best possible representation of the will of the people.

So it makes no sense at all for this constant pearl-clutching over the Greens and Labour having different policies. If they had identical policies they wouldn’t exist as two separate political parties. It makes no sense at all to keep demanding bottom lines and non-negotiables because we simply don’t know how the chips are going to fall. Where will Labour’s party vote end up? Will the Greens build on 12% or stay steady? How will Winston or IMP do?

It’s easy to be cynical and wonder if the constant highlighting of Labour/Green/IMP differences is part of a narrative to pre-judge any leftwing coalition as unstable and risky. But I think a lot of people are still stuck in a First Past the Post mode of thinking, where we have two major parties, they rule the roost, and the “minor” parties are mere annoyances who will fall in line with National or Labour as appropriate.

But the left’s diversity is a strength. We have more ideas to consider, more viewpoints in the mix, and our votes don’t just get a leftwing government elected, they determine what that leftwing government looks like – a strong Labour with several support options; a strong Green presence at the table; an IMP spoiler; even, if you want to take a risk on Winston’s whims and the randoms he’ll bring in with him, a New Zealand First to pull to the centre.

Labour and the Greens having different policies before an election is a good thing. After the election, when we’ve had our say, they can work out where there’s room to move and what mix of policies they can/want to implement.

It’s not like they’re going to sit back and say “Nup, not going to negotiate with you, going to give the Tories confidence and supply instead.”

… I mean, I can only hope!

 

*There is also actual antagonism between Labour and Green and IMP folk, no denying.

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The Nation’s leaders’ debate

This morning in New Zealand politics can best be summed up with one fantastic image.

Image swiped and cropped from @petergraczer
TALK TO THE HAND, COLIN.

I dragged myself out of bed at the ungodly hour of 9am to tune in to the first leaders’ debate of the election season – and it’s mostly Colin Craig’s fault. Had he not taken legal action to force the producers to give him a speaking slot I might honestly have missed that it was even on!

For that, and for trying to talk over Metiria Turei, resulting in the photo above, you have my grudging thanks, Colin.

In the true spirit of 21st century pseudo-journalism, here are my thoughts (and some others’) as they were tweeted in real time.

(Sale to overseas buyers, obviously.)

(It’s a great line, but also a deliberately-engineered political meme.)

(Full credit to @petergraczer for the fantastic pic of Metiria’s take-no-crap attitude.)

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What’s so important about 15 September?

I’m intrigued by Kim Dotcom’s announcement of earth-shattering revelations to be made on 15 September – just 5 days out from the last voting day of this general election.

Many people have expressed their doubts – though Laila Harre does have a point when she says KDC hasn’t really been proven wrong so far (that mysterious “sitting electorate MP” story notwithstanding.)  But until we know for sure – and only KDC and possibly John Key really know for sure – there’s definitely potential for his announcement to shift things just that tiny amount required to dethrone the National-led government.

However, the timing is really odd. If Dotcom really has a gamechanging revelation on his hands, why leave it so late?

It’s especially weird in an election year where multiple campaigns are underway to maximise early voting and voter turnout. The September 15 town hall meeting will happen 12 days in to the voting period, at a time when – if everything goes to plan – a large number of people will already have cast their ballots.

Admittedly, the Get Out and Vote and RockEnrol turnout campaigns are focused on progressive/leftwing and young voters (categories which overlap with each other to some extent.) Perhaps the target of Dotcom’s revelations are softer National-leaning voters who won’t be getting doorknocked or called and prompted to vote early.

But if there is a big smoking gun, and National know it, and they now know that they have until 15 September to get those soft voters out before their minds can be changed – well, we can expect to see them ramping up a turnout campaign of their own fairly shortly. So why give them the chance?

It could be that there are practical restraints on the timing. Perhaps some  legal injunction expires on the 14th, or the data’s encrypted with an Agents of SHIELD-style time-locked code, or the sun has to rise in the exact spot for its light to pass through an ancient crystal and reveal the location of the Ark.

The devious option is that there isn’t much there, and the long buildup to a short finale is designed to maximise the amount of media time Dotcom and the Internet Party get, and minimise the amount of time for the revelations to be debunked before the last voting day.

The absurdist option is that 15 September was the only free date they could get the Auckland Town Hall.

Whichever it is, Kim Dotcom is back in the news again, and I’m determined to see this as a good thing – because we know that interesting election races get higher turnout, and high turnouts are good for democracy.

(And yes, they’re also good for the left.)