A couple of days ago Fran O'Sullivan called John Key "New Zealand's conservative leader". On No Minister (I'm sorry, can't find the post).
Case in point is the anti-smacking legislation. I see in the Dom Post today that a father has been fined for belting his daughter. No indication that harm was done, but, it's illegal. Back when I was a child, it was very common for boys mostly to be sent off to the office for "the strap", where they would most likely be belted more vigorously than this girl had been.
Yet it is now politically incorrect to support belting, and it seems our "conservative" party even voted for the abysmal legislation that would have criminalised most of our parents.
To me, that legislation was the major test as to whether or not National and John Key knew about basic conservative principle of limiting the power of government to intervene in the family when there is no harm being done. They failed.
A real conservative leader would be saying right now that all recent legislation that has been introduced by the Labour Government that has gone against the will of the people (anti-smacking) or was rushed through without real thought as to the implications (ETS & EFA) will be repealed. Instead, all we hear is a defending silence.
Related Links: What John Key can learn from Sarah Palin
Ten Conservative Principles
But unfortunately New Zealand's conservative leader John Key would rather indulge his crush on Obama, than directly mix it by contesting Helen Clark with a clear agenda of his own.I commented then that John Key was not a conservative and over the last few days I've been thinking on the absurdity of this assumption. I think it rests on another assumption, that there is choice in politics. It is natural to assume that if one major party is one way, then in order to give balance and choice, that the other major party is another way. But has anyone seen any sort of differentiation from National showing how they will be different from Labour over the last year or so?
Case in point is the anti-smacking legislation. I see in the Dom Post today that a father has been fined for belting his daughter. No indication that harm was done, but, it's illegal. Back when I was a child, it was very common for boys mostly to be sent off to the office for "the strap", where they would most likely be belted more vigorously than this girl had been.
Yet it is now politically incorrect to support belting, and it seems our "conservative" party even voted for the abysmal legislation that would have criminalised most of our parents.
To me, that legislation was the major test as to whether or not National and John Key knew about basic conservative principle of limiting the power of government to intervene in the family when there is no harm being done. They failed.
In his bones, the National leader is more aligned with the McCain/Palin world view, but he lacks the courage to make the case for policy clarity.I disagree.In his bones, Key is a liberal, far more aligned to the policies such as the ETS which is now law, which will allow people who know how to make money off shares to transfer their expertise into this area.
A real conservative leader would be saying right now that all recent legislation that has been introduced by the Labour Government that has gone against the will of the people (anti-smacking) or was rushed through without real thought as to the implications (ETS & EFA) will be repealed. Instead, all we hear is a defending silence.
Related Links: What John Key can learn from Sarah Palin
Ten Conservative Principles
Exactly. The expression I use is "same gang, different colurs" and I've heard nothing from Key to change that perception.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course, the lack of choice is what's killing Britain now, with both major parties moving towards the so-called "middle way".
It's pure poison in a democracy.
He's certainly not paleo-conservative if one can call it that though there are hints that English might be on some issues. Key has wavered an awful lot on anything surrounding morality, the S59 position has never been particularly clear, I seem to remember him saying something different not so long ago, against the CU bill yet against the definition of marriage bill, wishy washy on his religious background. I can see why bloggers here may be disappointed on those counts.
ReplyDeleteBut there is still significant difference on employment law, health, welfare, RMA, probably Foreign policy, treaty issues and housing.. So to claim he's a carbon copy is a little disingenuous as it will represent a significant difference to a good proportion of voters.
Key is certainly not conservative. If we want a conservative government he must be forced to go into coalition with a conservative party that will hold him to task - and the only one with any hope of getting in and doing that is the Family Party. Dunne is too liberal. Act is "the liberal party". Kiwi doesn't have the faintest hope of gaining a seat.
ReplyDeleteIf the National party governs alone after the election, we may as well have stuck with Labour. But if they have to go into coalition with Family, or Family and Act, we will see some solid policies and some of this rubbish that Labour has been putting through (such as the ETS, EFA, smacking law, prostitution reform act etc) should be repealed.
Hi Mr Dennis, I partially agree. I agree that in the political environment that we have now in NZ, it makes sense to "force" National (if they get in) to go into coalition with a conservative party. However, the likelihood of whether or not they will need to go into coalition is up for grabs at this point. There is no way to "force" them if they get the numbers to govern alone.
ReplyDeleteBut, over the long term I think the conservative strategy has to be to get rid of MMP, and to work within the two party structure instead.
I read an interesting article a few days back where a pro-life leader was talking about politics in Canada. Apparently an election has just been announced. In his opinion, there is no choice between any of the parties for the things that really matter. They are, using an ice-cream analogy, offering different variations of vanilla. They are all so afraid of being politically incorrect and offending the small parties on whom they rely for power that they all offer a slight variation on vanilla. The most frustrating of al of them, this guy says, are the Tories who keep promising choc-chip, but only ever deliver vanilla as well.
In a two party system, if you are a small interest group, you first have to get past the party in terms of whether or not they think the interest of yours is electable. How electable would Green politics have been for the Labour party if we didn't have MMP? They would have discarded it out of hand and quite probably the ETS would never have seen the light of day. But with MMP, we have the tail wagging the dog.
MMP has to go.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteLucyna, whether they have to go into coalition or can govern alone is entirely up to voters. If enough voters choose to vote for Family instead of National (although we'd like to take as many Labour votes as possible of course), National will be forced to go with us to form a government.
ReplyDeleteOr to go with someone else of course, but we would be a good match policywise and would drag National back towards where they would prefer to be anyway, many of their Labour-lite policies being adopted purely to gain votes not because they are keen on them per-se.
At the moment, within the MMP system, we have the Green party way off the socialist-liberal end of the spectrum. To get their votes, the centre parties will always tend in this direction with policy - just like a seesaw. The only way to balance this out is to get a party on the other end of the seesaw. Just chucking more weight in the centre won't work, the seesaw will keep tipping in the same direction until you counterbalance it.
It's very easy to be a liberal :)
ReplyDelete