Predictions for the Elections 08:

This is more an exercise for my own gratification, this blog probably does not attract much attention any more, and I'd like to place my own thoughts on how the election will turn out so I can match them up with what really happens after the election.

National: Will get 56 MPs, 57 if the Maori party causes an overhang to fall their way. Will win a large number of electorates, so bad news for those list candidates in the high 40's region.

ACT: Will get 3 MPs, including Sir Roger Douglas. Rodney will win Epsom by a smaller majority than he did in 2005.

UF: Peter Dunne will be returned with no one to keep him company. Judy Turner will give a tel-all interview on Cambell Live about Dunne's shady dealings with various industry lobbies, which will destroy Dunne's political career.

Maori Party: Will win five of the Maori electorates, with Angeline Greensill and Derek Fox losing to Mahuta and Horomia respectively. Will win enough party support to justify three or four of their seats.

NZF: will not be returned, albeit gaining some 3.5% of the vote.

Labour: will get 46 MPs, 47 if the Maori party causes an overhang that falls their way. Labour will lose a lot of electorates to National, which if they lose the election will serve them well in three years time.

Greens: Will get 10 MPs. Will not top 4000 candidate votes in any electorate.

Progs: Anderton will return, but Matt Robson won't.

Minor parties outside Parliament: none will actually make it to Parliament, but the Kiwi party and the Family party will do well, getting around .5% each, with RAM and the Pacific party back around the .1-2% mark. The Kiwi Party, Family Party and RAM will each return to contest the election next time, all trying to take the policy area left by the departure of New Zealand first, the Kiwi party on Law and Order and Defence, RAM on Economic Populism and the Family party on Moral Conservatism. New World Order will pick up the wooden spoon for least popular party.

Post Election: Neither the Labour/Prog/Green or National/UF/ACT block will be able to form a Government by themselves and will need to convince the Maori party in some way to support them. For the Nat block, this means either a Maori party absention or confidence and supply, for the Lab block this can only be confidence and supply. The Maori party will be convinced to go with Labour, because they will agree to an overhaul of the Foreshore and Seabed bill that isn't repeal but goes a considerable way to address the Maori party's demands.

Shape of the Government: Greens will be in full formal coalition with Labour. A much more progressive agenda will be enacted, although it will be local environmental concerns rather than climate change that the Green side gets most traction on. Certain areas Labour won't back down on, most particularly Law and Order, but expect major action in health, energy, transport and a total overhaul of education.

By the End of the Term: Jacinda Adern will be Senior Government whip, while Chauvel, Twyford, Beaumont and Prasad are all new ministers for Labour and Norman, Kedgley, Turei and Graham are Cabinet members for the Greens. Turei will be co-leader before the end of the term. Clark will run for her fifth term with her Deputy Jones against the Key/Power team for National.

Over the next week or so will be posting a lot more on my Auckland Central RAM campaign blog - jump over there to check out why.

http://aucklandcentral.blogspot.com

Doctor Sutch: Innocent and still awesome

This blog is named after a book published by Doctor William Ball Sutch called 'The Quest for Security in New Zealand', a book that accurately summarised and to this day remains one of the defining pieces of popular economics and accessible economic history about New Zealand.

Sutch wanted New Zealand to be a socially just society that was independent from the control of foreign big business and that was capable of being an independent, principled nation in wider foreign policy that would be able to stand up against tyranny. Some of his dreams have come to fruition; most of them, the most sensible economic calls, have been ignored by successive free market-worshiping Labour and National politicians.

Sutch had a distinguished career with politicians of both the left and the right in New Zealand. He also had a very distinguished career overseas (mostly in New York) and in New Zealand working for the United Nations. He was very influential in establishing UNICEF, where he was given universal accolades by his colleagues, and heavy criticism by his American hosts who viewed his progressive Kiwi economics as being "communist" and being "socialistic".

For what will soon be nearly 70 years, a cabal of Sutch's jealous less able personal enemies from all over the world, right-wingers in New Zealand and in New York and American and New Zealand intelligence have waged a campaign against his character. They accused him of being a Soviet spy after .

He was arrested by the SIS when meeting with a Soviet embassy official in Wellington to encourage his defection to New Zealand in 1974, accused of giving secret documents to the Soviet Union but the subsequent trial vindicated his innocence. The public humiliation the SIS and Sutch's envious opponents engineered made him very sick, and he died in 1975, clearly due to the public pressure and embarrassment he felt from these false charges.

And yesterday, finally, the SIS was shown to be wrong yet again. They were forced by the Ombudsman to issue a selection of documents about Sutch, and despite a refusal by the SIS to issue two sets of documents that remain secret that apparently demonstrate Sutch's links to the Soviet Union [read: they don't show anything], they all show that Sutch was not a Soviet spy.

One of the documents, the 'Target Assessment' of Sutch from 1974, is one of the most remarkable pieces of red-baiting, subjective writing I have ever seen in my entire life. Even people on the extreme right like former ACT Party Vice-President Trevor Loudon would be amazed at the sheer bullshit that is written. You can read the document here (pdf format).

The document is the sort of thing you would ever dread being written about you if you were in Sutch's shoes. The SIS insisted on Sutch's guilt. So why did they, at the end of their conclusion of their target report in 1974 admit that they "can prove nothing of which he is suspected". In the same conclusion, their main argument that Sutch was a spy was that, if approached by the Soviets to be a spy for them, "he would not have been Sutch if he had refused to co-operate".

In the rest of report, it's discussed how Sutch went to cocktail functions at Polish, Soviet and Indian embassies once every several years, and arranged meetings with Soviet and Eastern Bloc economic officials in total view of the public to discuss NZ trade matters with them. These were stated in the report to be clear evidence that Sutch, along with his "pro-Soviet" and "pro-socialistic" views, was a spy!

Thus, Sutch is innocent. What I find terrible is the hysterical links between Sutch being a Soviet spy and a supporter of the Soviet Union. Sutch clearly liked parts of the Soviet Union, and disliked others. He clearly was not impressed by the levels of repression and lack of democracy in the country, but was impressed by the spectacular material and economic progress it had made in a few decades. Holding views like that never has been a crime in New Zealand, and in post-war New Zealand, neither was being a communist.

I think Sutch's entire case is a valuable lesson in why security agencies are a massive liability when they have people with strong, radical right-wing views inside of them (which I imagine makes up a large chunk of SIS senior people even today). The sheer McCarthyism in the documents about Sutch is sickening, and I imagine the colonially-minded people in the SIS still take the word from American security intelligence sources as gospel.

After all, what does the SIS need to prove if they can hide their evidence? The anti-terror raids showed how moves toward police state style intelligence are fundamentally in opposition to civilised systems of justice.

The SIS accused Sutch of crimes of which he was not guilty, and used secrecy as a shield to protect themselves from being shown up for being lying, red-baiters totally dominated by Western intelligence agencies driven to discredit anyone senior in politics anywhere who had views that opposed American imperialism and had a warm view of the Soviet Union.

I certainly hope the SIS is better today, and I certainly hope these document releases will now refocus public attention on Sutch's amazing talents and achievements with his work in New Zealand and overseas.

Oliver Woods' Campaign Blog

http://aucklandcentral.blogspot.com/

That is the blog I will using more commonly from now on. I have made the decision to launch an alternative campaign against incumbent Labour MP Judith Tizard in the Auckland Central electorate. Old fashioned campaigning style with new, fresh ideas. Check out the page, and my Facebook page, for more details.

I'll continue blogging my ideas posts on Quest for Security though, so I wont be gone by any means.

Cheers,
Oliver

A good policy from National now, but what comes later?

It is not often that I see something from National that I really like, so I thought I would note that I quite like National's proposal to keep Med students in New Zealand by wiping their debt if they stay here.

They have a few 'populist' policies like that this election. Unfortunately, due to some spy work last election I did for Labour, I'm convinced that their agenda is still as free market-privatise-everything-de-regulate the rest as ever - they are simply going to wait until their second term to do it.

Their thinking is this: they have to beat Labour first, and that isn't going to be easy if you are taking ACT's policies to the electorate, because they frankly just aren't that popular. But once Labour has been beaten, a second term is almost an assured thing for a National Government. And that is when they can quietly put "privatise hospitals, prisons, schools and roads" into their election manifesto. Hell, if the 1984 Labour Government can get a second term anyone can.

And they are right, Labour is going to fall apart after the election, if they lose. There will be a hard core of activists who ensure it comes back in 9-12 years but realistically the party is incredibly top heavy in terms of senior MPs and activists, and a lot will probably view an election loss as time to call it quits. If National luches sharply to the right in 2011, the chances are good that Labour will not fight it all that hard, seeking to stay in what they percieve as the electable centre of politics.

Someone is going to need to speak out against it when it happens. I know RAM is going to be there.

Who are RAM - Residents Action Movement?

RAM - Residents Action Movement is a political party that is going to contest the 2008 elections with both electorate and list candidates.

RAM is a party that is built around three fundamental principles: social justice, human dignity and environmental balance. In essence we're a party that put people at the centre of politics, not profit, foreign investors or big business.

We're a broad left party that has people from a variety of backgrounds, whether they be trade unionists, students, Muslims and other immigrants, Maori, community activists, or with former roles in the Labour, National and Green parties. It's a broad church in the old fashioned New Zealand sense: a shared dedication to a set of basic humanistic goals that the rest of the parties in Parliament have forgotten about up in their ivory towers.

In the last several weeks, we have recruited 1000 members by going out onto the streets and telling people our message. People from all over the country have joined the party, and plans for electorate candidates and developing a formal policy manifesto are on their way.

Since RAM's formation in 2003 in Auckland, we have stood for lowering taxes for struggling working people, cutting GST from food, free and frequent public transport, social inclusion and respect and tolerance in our communities. Broad left, common sense goals, to steal one of Peter Dunne's most overused phrases.

We have made strong stands against big business, corporate politics, environmental destruction and racism. We have criticised the Chinese free trade agreement, for example, because of the damage it is going to wreak on our manufacturing sector and additionally because of the flawed radical philosophy of free trade.

In recent weeks, we've been reported in the NZ Herald and even had John Key, Sue Bradford and Chris Carter comment on our existence on the Scoop news website. We have gotten on several different TV stations (here is an interview with me that was broadcast on Auckland-based Triangle TV and also the Sky news channel Stratos), been in other newspapers all over the country (including a feature story in the Howick and Pakuranga Times) and overall have gotten an amazing response that we could never have predicted when we made the decision to become a national broad left political party.

This is only the beginning!

As much as this constitutes an electoral advertisement (which it does not really - it's just me saying the facts) under what I now realise is a very draconian Electoral Finance Act, this 'advertisement' was authorised by RAM Chair Grant Morgan, 24 Church Road, Manukau City.